Fat Girl (Blog Tour & Giveaway!)

Hi there!

Title: Fat Girl (#1 in the series)
Author:  Leigh Carron
Publisher:  Carron Publishing  
Published Date:  24^th June 2014

Rating: 4 Stars

Synopsis: Years after fleeing small-town Springvale, Illinois, Deeana Chase has picked up the pieces of her shattered heart and built a new life for herself as a child advocacy lawyer. Her food addiction is quasi under control, her secrets are buried, and she has even made a tenuous peace with her plus-size body. Until…

Micah Peters—the very sexy and now famous man she fled— walks through her office door and sends Dee reeling. His demand that she help a young boy caught in a custody battle will reunite her with the past she left behind. Torn between duty and self-preservation, Dee isn’t easy to convince.

But when obligation wins, the former lovers get more than they bargained for—a searing passion that burns hotter than ever and startling revelations about what really happened the fateful night she left.

Will the truth set Dee free to love again? Or will past hurts and lingering insecurities destine her to walk away from her heart again, this time for good?

FAT GIRL is the first book in this provocative two-part series about love and self-acceptance.

Interview: 

Where did you get the inspiration for this novel?

The inspiration for Fat Girl came from my own struggles with body image and knowing how many women struggle with the same. I could see her story unfolding inside my head. I could hear the inner voice that tells her she is not pretty enough, skinny enough, perfect enough.

Regardless of size, I thought Deeana Chase would be a woman most of us could relate to in some way. On the surface she’s a successful attorney who appears to have her life together. But it’s built on a shaky foundation of secrets and insecurities. A fact she quickly discovers when Micah Peters walks through her office door and cracks those carefully concealed fissures wide open.

Fat Girl is a sexy romance about the tumultuous and passionate relationship between former lovers, and the family ties that connect them. But it is also the story of a woman’s journey to find what we all want and need, unconditional love and self-acceptance.

What's your favourite thing about the cover?

I’m crazy about the cover. My favorite is the color contrast and the image of a broken heart on a plate, which is both simple and powerful. 

Who is your favourite character and why?

I love Micah…love the beauty he sees in Deeana, but my favorite character is my girl, Dee.  Her self-confidence and self-worth have been damaged by a number of factors in her life. She often appears to be mired in the past, in her battles with food and her body, but I see her as a fighter. Strong, smart, independent and perfectly imperfect. I enjoyed taking this journey of self-discovery with her.

What is one thing you learned about your writing as you wrote this?

It’s amazing to be able to pull something from my imagination and make it come to life. But it’s also a challenging task to translate an idea from my brain onto the computer screen. I tend to do better with minimum structure. When I try to plan out my story or my time, I find my creativity gets stifled and it limits the flow of my writing. That doesn’t mean I don’t set some guidelines to keep on track. I do. My muse and I just don’t adhere to a rigid schedule.

Do you have anything you want to say to your readers?

Yes. Thank you for the support and validation. Readers have been great at posting reviews and tweeting. It means a lot to me as an author to know my work is appreciated. The best thing though, is when women reach out and tell me that they related to Dee and found a little inspiration among the pages. I am truly humbled.

Review: Well, this was a book that really wasn’t what I was expecting, but I still managed to really enjoy. Leigh Carron did a wonderful job of making incredible characters that had a lot of depth to them.

I will give you a word of warning though – this is very much for mature readers of 18+. I knew this was a romance, but I didn’t know the sexual scenes were going to be so descriptive; otherwise I probably wouldn’t have picked it up. Erotica is not my genre and I avoid it at all costs >.> So be prepared for that. However, I still did like this story.

The beginning drew me in. We start with the scene where Mick walks into Dee’s office and asks for her to take a case. And even though we know nothing of what has happened between them yet, we can tell there is a lot of anger between them in the past, and tension upon them meeting again. But you can also tell there is a lot of chemistry there too, and it made for an interesting mix. This is a dual point of view, so we get to see things from both Mick’s and Dee’s viewpoints. Which is good, because these characters see the same happenings in different ways, and since emotions are so important in this novel it’s good to see both of theirs.

I loved the characters, and Dee was my favourite. Whenever she gets into a difficult patch she tends to either run away or throw up her defenses, which is only acceptable if you consider her past. She’s been through a tricky past after she lived in plenty of foster homes, saw her mother die and then found peace with her foster parents Mama and Papa T. But something happened one night that causes her to run away, and we never get to find out what this is until the end. When I did discover what it was my heart went out to her so much, it was unbelievable.

Seeing as Dee is overweight the themes of self-esteem, fame and appearance come into this, as well as accepting who you are. There is also family abuse as well as coping with death. The funny thing is I recently read Cinder & Ella which also deals with self-esteem and fame, and Only theGood Die Young which also ties in with court and law.

Dee is a lawyer, which means there is some mention of a court case. I wished that this was a more prominent thing in the book. Amongst the themes and the romance it kind of got shoved to the side and that was sad, because it was something I felt should have more importance.

The ending to the book was really sudden and abrupt! I thought it was the ending of a chapter so I turned for more… but it just wasn’t there D: At least there is a book two coming up, which I can’t wait to read J

 

Giveaway: A digital copy of Fat Girl will be awarded to a commenter at each stop, so leave a way for us to contact you! And enter the rafflecopter to win a Amazon/visa giftcard, an autographed signed copy of Fat Girl and a chance to discuss the book with the author on the phone!

 

GIVEAWAY

 

Author Bio and Links:

 
 

About Me: An American living in Canada. Chocolate snob. Recovering yo-yo dieter. Devoted mom and wife, blessed with a brilliantly witty daughter and unintentionally humorous husband. My wacky family feed my creativity and fuel my passion. Most nights, you will find me either curled up with a great book or, more often, sitting at my computer, tapping out the countless visions in my head. 

To me, there is nothing better in a narrative than perfectly flawed but strong characters and intense romance that is sexy, deep, and sensual. Mm…I liken such stories to a box of Godiva. Decadent and delicious! You can’t stop at just one. In fact, I’m now hard at work on my next novel—A Naked Beauty, the conclusion to Fat Girl.

Website, Facebook, Twitter, GoodReads, Amazon, Kobo and Smashwords!

Olivia’s Question: Have you ever struggled with self-image?

Olivia-Savannah x