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A review by sherwoodreads
Fitness Junkie by Jo Piazza, Lucy Sykes
When Janey Sweet, CEO of a couture wedding dress company that only makes clothes up to a size 6, is photographed in the front row of a fashion show eating a bruffin–a mix of brioche and muffin–her life-long best friend and business partner, Beau, gives her an ultimatum: Lose thirty pounds or lose your job.
Janey is shocked. She knows she’s put on a few pounds since her divorce, but she’s not a model—she’s the business part of the company! When she tries to remonstrate, Beau, her best friend since they were eight years old, reminds her that he has 51% of the business, and there is an actual clause in her contract about her weight.
So she goes to her college friend CJ, who is obsessed about her weight, and the two hurl themselves into the world of New York’s high end fitness revolution.
What got me interested was the promise of hilarity, specifically a reference to nude yoga, but that scene is more cringe-worthy and thought-provoking than it is hilarious. That is not to say that the funny isn’t there, because it is. The authors do a nifty job of satirizing not only rich New York’s obsession with being thin, but the entrepreneurs who cater to them (and prey on them), sometimes at the cost of their own sanity.
A sub-thread is Ivy, Janey’s cousin who is not rich, unlike Janey, and who lost her career as a ballet dancer to an accident, so is now a fitness instructor. Ivy, a genuinely nice girl with a hopeful and happy outlook on life, discovers that the more she abuses the people who come to her hip, expensive workouts, the more they return.
There is a lot of colorful detail about the high fashion world of New York, and where it intersects with artisanal health-food obsessions as well as fitness, but even more important, this book is about humans relating to one another as well as to their own bodies.
The backbone of the story is betrayal by the one closest to you. Janey has a great deal of reevaluating to do, and not just about her physical self. This journey, as well as the escalating story of the search for the Perfect Thin kept me turning the pages.
The narrative is charming, funny, observant, and spiced with wish-fulfillment, making the book a terrific summer read.
Copy provided by NetGalley
Janey is shocked. She knows she’s put on a few pounds since her divorce, but she’s not a model—she’s the business part of the company! When she tries to remonstrate, Beau, her best friend since they were eight years old, reminds her that he has 51% of the business, and there is an actual clause in her contract about her weight.
So she goes to her college friend CJ, who is obsessed about her weight, and the two hurl themselves into the world of New York’s high end fitness revolution.
What got me interested was the promise of hilarity, specifically a reference to nude yoga, but that scene is more cringe-worthy and thought-provoking than it is hilarious. That is not to say that the funny isn’t there, because it is. The authors do a nifty job of satirizing not only rich New York’s obsession with being thin, but the entrepreneurs who cater to them (and prey on them), sometimes at the cost of their own sanity.
A sub-thread is Ivy, Janey’s cousin who is not rich, unlike Janey, and who lost her career as a ballet dancer to an accident, so is now a fitness instructor. Ivy, a genuinely nice girl with a hopeful and happy outlook on life, discovers that the more she abuses the people who come to her hip, expensive workouts, the more they return.
There is a lot of colorful detail about the high fashion world of New York, and where it intersects with artisanal health-food obsessions as well as fitness, but even more important, this book is about humans relating to one another as well as to their own bodies.
The backbone of the story is betrayal by the one closest to you. Janey has a great deal of reevaluating to do, and not just about her physical self. This journey, as well as the escalating story of the search for the Perfect Thin kept me turning the pages.
The narrative is charming, funny, observant, and spiced with wish-fulfillment, making the book a terrific summer read.
Copy provided by NetGalley