It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide
Big Boned

Big Boned

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Can she be herself in a one-size-fits-all world?

Lori Palmer is the new girl at Bay Water High, where students prize glossy hair, "beach" bodies, and thigh gaps above all else, which is so not her. She misses her old school, where her artistic talent was more important to her peers than a chia smoothie recipe ever was.

Uncomfortable in her own size-sixteen skin, Lori decides to survive senior year as best she can by blending into the background while she melts in the summer heat. But her plans go completely awry when she discovers popular jock Jake volunteering at her brother Zac's school. When her brother befriends Jake's sister, Lori is suddenly thrust into Jake's unfamiliar world of water polo, parties, and stargazing.

As she grows closer to Jake, and her relationship with her mother starts to deteriorate, Lori's old anxieties resurface and she throws herself into her art. It's a wildly new direction for Lori, and through it she realizes that finding her voice might get her into a world of trouble, but standing up for what she believes in is as important as standing up for herself.


© Jo Watson 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

About the author

Jo Watson

Jo Watson is the award-winning author of contemporary romances for both adults and teens, including The Destination Love series and her YA debut Big Boned, a Publisher's Marketplace Buzz Book. A graduate of the arts and media school AFDA, Jo earned an honors degree in Live Performance and worked as a script writer, director, and producer before deciding to publish her stories on Wattpad, which catapulted her now full-time career as an author. To date, her stories have accumulated more than 50 million reads on the platform and she has become an international bestselling sensation, having sold over half a million books worldwide, and partnering with major publishers to bring her stories to bookshelves everywhere. She lives with her husband and son in South Africa.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more