Bodies to Die For
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4.0 • 6 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Perfect for fans of You Shouldn’t Have Come Here and None of This Is True, Bodies to Die For is a brilliant psychological thriller that will have readers wondering whether the perfect body really is worth dying for ...
Popular fitness influencer Gemma has transformed herself from a Before into an After, complete with washboard abs, thriving business, and gorgeous husband. But social media can be deceiving. Offline, the cutthroat world of bikini bodybuilding may just eat her alive. That’s if she’s not first devoured by the secret nemesis that lurks beneath her polished surface, waiting to destroy her.
Software engineer Ashley is fat and frustrated. Frustrated with failed diets. With a world that wants her to shrink. With biased doctors, online trolls, and even her own mother. Until Ashley falls in with a mysterious and radical sect of Fat Activists who are fighting back … by any means necessary. She’s never felt so alive, so full of purpose. She’ll do whatever it takes to ride this high, destroy Diet Culture, and win the approval of her charismatic leader.
Gemma and Ashley are on a collision course headed for the Olympia, the bodybuilding competition where futures are made. And lost. When Gemma’s toughest rival turns up dead, and more fitness girls fall like dominoes, it’s beginning to look like the body image war has gone too far.
With breakneck pace and keen insights, Bodies to Die For takes a hard look at social media, the $70 billion diet industry, and the war on women’s bodies—the wars we wage with each other, and with ourselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brand's sharp debut sets a murder mystery amid the cutthroat world of fitness influencers. Gemma Jorgenson is a model, bodybuilder, and personal trainer with half a million Instagram followers. After placing second in the national Bikini Olympia competition several years in a row, she's confident she can finally take gold, boosting her following and potential brand deals in the process. Her path becomes clearer when Bianca Summers, who regularly stands between Gemma and the trophy, turns up dead in her hotel room. Gemma's mixed feelings about Bianca's murder give way to full-blown fear when more Bikini Olympia contestants are killed. Meanwhile, software engineer Ashley Sherma, who's been yo-yo dieting since the fourth grade, has her life changed when she meets the charismatic and eccentric Lydia Wright, founder of the Fat Activist movement, which seeks to reduce the stigma around being overweight. Ashley puts her dark web skills to work for the organization, but soon learns its aims might be less liberatory than Lydia first let on. In short, punchy chapters that alternate perspectives between Gemma and Ashley, Brand—herself a former bodybuilder—sets the two women on a deliriously entertaining collision course. The mix of top-notch suspense and gleeful social satire makes this sing.
Customer Reviews
It was fun
At times hard to follow but mostly fun. And a bit preachy at the same time.