Praise for The F Word:
“Honest, humorous and whip smart, Liza Palmer’s The F Word is impossible to put down and so much fun to read.”
—USA Today’s Happily Ever After
“Funny, fresh, and frank...Snappy and smart...This is an important book to discuss today.”
—The Oklahoman
Refinery29's 10 Best Reads of April
“A funny and fantastic lesson on how perfection doesn’t translate to happiness…Palmer’s authentic humor carries the message with a hint of parody. This is a smart and sardonic novel with a genuine voice.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Funny, painfully honest, and hard to put down.”
—Kirkus
“Between the characters, the plot, and the tension, I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. Spoiler alert: the F is for fantastic!”
—Stephanie Evanovich, New York Times bestselling author of Big Girl Panties
“Fresh, frank, and fearless. Liza Palmer is a road warrior of contemporary fiction.”
—Georgia Clark, author of The Regulars
“The F Word is Liza Palmer at the top of her game. This book is effortlessly funny with a very big heart—and still manages to find time to be a meaningful take on women’s relationships with their own bodies…Pitch-perfect.”
—Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of Maybe in Another Life and One True Loves
Praise for Liza Palmer’s Previous Novels:
“Liza Palmer is definitely one of my new favorite writers!”
—Meg Cabot, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Princess Diaries
“If you’re a young, professional woman …step away from your computer or laptop, run to your nearest bookstore and buy the book already.”
—USA Today
“Palmer tells a story like a girlfriend over brunch.”
—People
“Keen and honest.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
“Touching, funny, and oh, so human.”
—Caren Lissner, bestselling author of Carrie Pilby
“Palmer writes with heart and humor…dispelling the long-abandoned clichés about romance novels and damsels in distress.”
—Booklist
“Smart, funny, and heartbreakingly honest. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Johanna Edwards, bestselling author of The Next Big Thing
“Clever and very romantic.”
—Mirror
“Inspired me, and will inspire all female readers, to be and demand and desire more for themselves.”
—RT Magazine
“In a word: genuine.”
—Herald Sun
“Engaging and poignant and heartbreakingly real.”
—Jennifer Weiner, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Good In Bed
2017-02-06
A successful PR associate must come to terms with resurrected high school demons.On the surface, Olivia Morten's life seems perfect: she has a rewarding career in which she finely orchestrates celebrities' public images; an attractive, successful neurosurgeon husband; a dream house; and of course, a flawless body. It's evident from the beginning of Palmer's (Girl Before a Mirror, 2015, etc.) latest, though, that a shameful secret lurks under this veneer: the memory of what she terms Fat Me, the "forever alone, overly emotional, out-of-control" embodiment of her high school self. Olivia has hidden her past so well that even her husband knows only bits and pieces of the truth, and in the image-obsessed Hollywood bubble in which Olivia works, it's vital that she never let herself slip. But a chance encounter with her high school crush (and tormentor), Ben Dunn, at a coffee shop inconveniently brings Fat Me to the forefront of her consciousness. And when the perfect volunteer opportunity for salvaging a celebrity client's reputation arises—at a Halloween Fair for foster children in the high school at which Ben is now principal—Olivia's forced deeper yet into her own personal time machine. As the Halloween plans progress (as does the sexual tension with Ben) and her marriage and personal life begin to fracture around her, Olivia is finally compelled to take a hard look at Fat Me and the person she's become in order to hide her. This leads to an arc of self-realization that's satisfying but somewhat oversimplified, implying that one can lay years of restrictive eating patterns by the wayside in one sudden burst of self-acceptance. Nonetheless, Palmer develops her characters well—Olivia is complicated, flawed, and reflective, transforming what could have been a flat, superficial novel into one that's by turns funny, painfully honest, and hard to put down (though descending periodically into clichéd territory). Palmer uses a light touch to broach the subject of female body image, both in Olivia's mind and as a constant societal background hum—from the crusty baguette eaten only by the men at a dinner party to the way Olivia's celebrity client must be seated with her back to the restaurant, "to lower the risk of a photo of her putting food in her mouth." It's vindicating, then, to watch Olivia rise above the noise, even when it's as simple as asking for the bread to be passed to her at a dinner party. Honest and entertaining.
