Butter

by Erin Jade Lange

[Angie]

I've been wanting to read Butter forever, and I'm so glad that I finally did. It's heartbreaking, funny, disturbing, cute, and eye-opening. Butter is sixteen and weighs 423 pounds. He eats, and eats, and eats some more despite being told he needs to lose wait. He believes he's a lost cause, so why even bother? It's not like he's picked on at school. He's mostly just ignored, although the kids only ever call him by his nickname. But one day, that changes. He puts himself out there, only to have food thrown at him. Then Butter gets this idea. He doesn't want to live anymore, but he wants to go out with a bang. He decides that he's going to eat himself to death live on the internet on New Year's Eve.

Butter is a wonderful narrator. He's snarky and sarcastic, but there's also times when he lets us see how he's really feeling. He doesn't fit in anywhere, except in the world of music. But even then, he only plays his saxophone in the privacy of his own room. It's so easy to get caught up in his story, even when it took a turn for the worse. And the worst is when he starts getting excited about his "last meal" after the popular guys at school invite him into their fold. He's getting encouragement, he doesn't have to eat lunch alone, and he goes out to hang with kids from school. It's actually pretty sick how Butter only manages to make "friends" when they're waiting for him to kill himself.

Butter definitely broke my heart in places. Butter doesn't even realize that he's not a lost cause, and that it's up to him to make changes in his life. He blames his genetics--which is part of the problem--and his mom for feeding him all the time. He blames the kids at school for ignoring him and him having to fill the friendship hole with food. He even blame his friend Tucker from fat camp, who lost a lot of weight and is now leaving him behind. It took all of this fake friendship and a suicide attempt to make him see that he can make friends on his own (without being a sideshow) and he can lose the weight if he tries. It's all up to him.

I really enjoyed Butter. It's a sad subject, but it's told with a kind of lightness that it made it less depressing. I still think the way these kids react to Butter's declaration is totally sick and disturbing, but I also believed that they didn't think he'd go through with it. That he was just putting on a show, and they wanted to be part of it. I also liked that the author never got preachy about weight and obesity. Of course, she makes it clear that Butter's weight is not healthy and that it's causing him many health problems, but this story also didn't glamorize weightloss and being skinny. It was more about being physically and mentally healthy.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.