The F Word

The F Word by Liza Palmer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


“There’s the truth and then there’s the lie that people want to believe…”

Olivia Morten is an LA Publicist whose life would appear to be perfect. She has a perfect job, a perfect husband, and to all appearances, everything has taken a complete 180 from her days as an overweight girl in the local high school. Then one day she runs into Ben, an old crush from her fat days who forces her to question her transformation into this “new and improved” Olivia. This one meeting starts a snowball effect in her life that pulls away at the story that her outward self conveys to the world.

The F Word is full of insights into celebrity culture and our view of women. Admittedly, it’s not my usual kind of read, but the more I got into it, the better it got. The questions Olivia asks of herself are not unlike questions many of us may have about the perfect lives of people we don’t know very well. There was a nice symmetry with her job as a person who protects other people’s images versus her protection of her own. The “lie that people want to believe” is that Olivia, having lost the weight (albeit thru surgery, a detail which seems important) she is no longer “Fat Liv,” the girl from her past.

I can’t lie: I really liked this. It’s pretty F-ing good.




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