Book Review :: Puddin’, by Julie Murphy

Puddin' by Julie Murphy
ISBN: 0062418394
Published by HarperCollins
on 2019-05-07
Genres: Fiction, Young Adult
Pages: 464
Source: HarperCollins NZ
Find at Harper Collins NZ
Goodreads

Millie Michalchuk has gone to fat camp every year since she was a little girl. Not this year. This year she has new plans to chase her secret dream of being a newscaster—and to kiss the boy she’s crushing on.

Callie Reyes is the pretty girl who is next in line for dance team captain and has the popular boyfriend. But when it comes to other girls, she’s more frenemy than friend.

When circumstances bring the girls together over the course of a semester, they surprise everyone (especially themselves) by realizing that they might have more in common than they ever imagined.

Last updated on 19 January 2024

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Puddin’ is the companion book to Dumplin’, but is it as good?

No, but it was pretty darn cute! Puddin, by Julie Murphy is a companion book to the now-a-Netlifx-movie Dumplin’, and what that means is that it sort of sits along side Dumplin, not as a sequel per-se, but as a book that is connected by its characters. The main characters in Dumplin’ are in Puddin’ but the main focus is on different characters in Puddin’ (though our protaganoists in this were also in Dumplin’). If that makes sense. You can read either book by itself, though there are things in Puddin’ that spoil Dumplin’ a little, so if you’re planning on reading both, read them in publication order.

But moving on to the story: Puddin’ tells the tale of Millie Michalchuk and Callie Reyes and their interwoven stories. Millie and Callie are very different; one is the fat kid at school, the other one of the popular girls on the dance team. One is a goodie two-shoes, one is a bit of a rebel. They don’t associate, they don’t move in the same circles. But their circles suddenly overlap, and their lives are intertwined.

My thoughts on Puddin’

I didn’t enjoy this book as much as Dumplin’. It took me over two weeks to read it and it’s not even that long. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy it while I was reading it, but I think I got tired of it. Usually it doesn’t take me longer than a week to read a book, depending on what else is happening in my life, but this month I’ve been a lot of other things so haven’t had many good blocks of time to just sit and read. Hence the two weeks. Hence me getting a bit tired of it.

But it was a really sweet story, and Murphy’s writing is, as Sophie so rightly put it, ‘like a toasty warm hug and a cookie while sitting in your favourite spot in your favourite pyjamas’. It’s just like that. It’s told in first person by Millie and Callie, alternating chapters throughout, which is always a great way to tell two sides of a story.

If you’ve read Dumplin’ or seen the Netflix movie, then do read Puddin’; it’s a great companion book and you get to find out a little more about the main characters in Dumplin’ after their book ends. This is a book that takes some pretty big issues and tells them in a wonderful way, and despite my 3.5 star rating and the aspects of the book that I’ve talked about in this post, I did enjoy reading it. I’ve pumped it down a bit though, because it wasn’t a book that I wanted to get back to all the time. I wasn’t thinking about it when I wasn’t reading and wasn’t rushing to finish it. But do pick it up! Especially if you enjoy a sweet YA story about an unlikely friendship.

Have you read Puddin’? What did you think?