If the Shoe Fits by Julie Murphy

Summary from Goodreads:

After having just graduated with a degree in shoe design, and trying to get her feet on the ground, Cindy is working for her stepmother, who happens to be the executive producer of America's favorite reality show, Before Midnight. When a spot on the show needs filling ASAP, Cindy volunteers, hoping it might help jump-start her fashion career, or at least give her something to do while her peers land jobs in the world of high fashion.

Turns out being the only plus size woman on a reality dating competition makes a splash, and soon Cindy becomes a body positivity icon for women everywhere. What she doesn't expect? That she may just find inspiration-and love-in the process. Ultimately, Cindy learns that if the shoe doesn't fit, maybe it's time to design your own.

Review:

I don’t read a lot of Adult Fiction. And when I do, it isn’t typically Romance. However, I love Julie Murphy. She has yet to write anything I haven’t liked. And while I’m not a huge Cinderella fan, I do tend to like Project Runway-oriented shows and stories, so when I got this book for review, it called to me. I also love the cover. I love everything about a plus-size Cinderella. I wish there was a character like Cindy on a show like the Bachelor.

This all being said, I really enjoyed reading this. I needed something light and fluffy. This fit the bill. It reminded me a little of the YA series: The Selection, where I ended up liking more of the contestants than I thought I would. I didn’t hate Cindy’ s step mom or step sisters like you usually do in Cinderella retellings, and this was nice. There was a little more female empowerment and a little less slut-shaming than you tend to see in reality shows about finding Mr. Right.

I’m not sure all the “stolen” moments between the love interests were believable. Like they seemed to get away with quite a bit. With that many cameras and crew people around, would sneaking into hiding places so many times really have been possible? I’m not so sure. Also, there love was bit instant for my liking. I found Cindy way more interesting than Henry. I found Henry’s backstory and family interesting, but all of his time with Cindy seemed kind of generic. I get that a lot of it was on TV, but still…

There’s a lot of little fun details in this book. It was fun reading the behind the camera moments of things, like how the show set everything up -from the dates, to the make up. I liked reading about the crew and how they bet on the girls. The fashion tidbits were fun.  I guess all in all, this was just a fun, light read (though there is a lot of mention of Cindy losing her dad).

Was there anything that really made it stand out as Adult instead of YA? Not really (besides the age of the main character, who was just out of college). And okay, there’s some adult relationship stuff, but it’s not really present. It read very much like a YA book in that regard. I can see a lot of Murphy’s YA fans loving this. I give it a 7/10.