I picked this up expecting something rip-roaringly funny from the title. This wasn’t quite what I got. While this has some laughs, it is not a ‘funny’ humour book. Don’t expect to be rolling around clutching your sides, but if you’re someone who has ever struggled with your weight expect to wear a knowing and at times slightly rueful grin through most of the book.

Covering four sisters’ individual stories of dieting and struggles with weight (except one, the lucky so-and-so) everything is in here: from counting points, net carbs and calories, to fasting and exercise videos. They are brutally honest about the effects of life on weight, from baby weight gains to new-boyfriend losses. The other consistent and sad theme is unsupportive husbands – and there’s one or two who should be on starvation diets themselves…(a hint, ladies, if he starts being rude about your build, his middle-age spread is not off limits.)

The final chapter advising on nutrition etc, is by David Bruce, the sisters’ brother. As with many healthy eaters, he does miss the problem of conflicting food allergies and health conditions – if I tried to eat the diet he suggests as healthy, I’d be dead! – but his cry for common sense in the face of conflicting studies is a welcome change.

The formatting, cover, and presentation are good, and the title as I mentioned, hooked me straight out of the gate. Sadly, the book didn’t. The problem is that this feels as through the four chapters should come to a conclusion, that it should be building towards something. It is not humorous enough to stand as a funny book, but there’s nothing distinctive enough to make it stand as an informational or educational work.

There was one anecdote that bothered me: in Rosa’s chapter, she describes rescuing a child from drowning while fully dressed and after she’s climbed out, the first thing the lifeguard says is a comment about her weight. I sincerely hope the first comment to him was “You look like you’re fired”, as if he had been doing his job, she wouldn’t have been in the pool.

(Also when someone is on a diet, eating all of their diet candy is not a good idea – see the reviews of sugar-free gummy bears on Amazon for examples; https://www.amazon.co.uk/Astra-Sugar-Teddy-Bears-Sweets/product-reviews/B01LTIQJVK/ref=cm_cr_othr_d_show_all_btm?ie=UTF8&filterByKeyword=laxative+effect#reviews-filter-bar)

If I said, it isn’t a bad read but this never really clicked for me. I am honestly not sure what the point of the book is. It isn’t detailed enough to be a memoir for dieting, it isn’t funny enough to have wide appeal as a comedy book, and there’s not enough factual material on diets for educational reads. The main audience I could see would be people sitting outside their exercise group or dieticians consultation reading it to psych themselves up, and that’s a rather limited group. The other flaw is that it doesn’t have a great re-read value; this isn’t a book I’d go back to for fun or even to look up comments in it.