The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker

I received this book for review through Hatchette Book Group. It is being counted towards the Pub 09 Challenge and Countdown Challenge.

I don’t normally request books that lots of others are reviewing, especially fiction as I’m not great at writing reviews of fiction novels for adults. However I couldn’t turn this one down after reading the summary, it just sounded too interesting.

Summary: When Truly Plaice’s mother was pregnant, the town of Aberdeen joined together in betting how recordbreakingly huge the baby boy would ultimately be. The girl who proved to be Truly paid the price of her enormity; her father blamed her for her mother’s death in childbirth, and was totally ill equipped to raise either this giant child or her polar opposite sister Serena Jane, the epitome of feminine perfection. When he, too, relinquished his increasingly tenuous grip on life, Truly and Serena Jane are separated–Serena Jane to live a life of privilege as the future May Queen and Truly to live on the outskirts of town on the farm of the town sadsack, the subject of constant abuse and humiliation at the hands of her peers. Read more here.

When I first received this book, I thought it would be more about Truly’s early life but in actuality it spans much of her life. Her birth is described and then her toddler hood is described and then it skips to her childhood and then more time skips…. This serves the book well and shows us more about what her life is really and “truly” like.

I was curious as to just how much of a giant Truly really was and I was a little disappointed that it wasn’t described better. Near the end of the book we finally get an estimate of poundage but it seemed that one minute she wasn’t being described as being all that big and the next minute she was mammoth. The cover picture suggests being just slightly overweight and the inside cover with the copyright information says this book is listed under 1. Fiction – tall women. I do believe I know why Tiffany Baker did not set out a specific height and weight and that is because by setting a weight, she is effectively calling anyone that weight a giant which if I were the person being called a giant, would deter me from reading her book and any other books by her. This is just my guess though, not words from the author.

It’s hard to write a review when there are so many other good ones out there which I will link to at the end of this review. I did find it a little slow going at first and again in the middle but after about two thirds of the book I was hooked and couldn’t put it down till I finished it.

The following is not a spoiler in the sense that if you read it, there’s no point in reading the book but if you would prefer not to know anything more than what is in the short summary above, don’t skip the next paragraph. If you read the full description by clicking on the link, than it’s nothing you don’t already know.

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Tabitha has a Shadow Book which I thought was really cool as a Pagan but I would never have predicted the information we are given about it in the book. This proved to be a great part of the book.

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I recommend this book to anyone who is up for something new although I don’t see many men reading it. I enjoyed it.

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