Every body can be a dancer’s body!
All her life, Fiona has dreamed of becoming a dancer but she was always told that dancing was not for “fat girls” like her. Now, at age thirty-five, Fiona is again confronted with her weight issues when the HR department kindly encourages her and a co-worker, Stu, to attend a support group for people with “health” issues. When quilting is suggested as a hobby to help with their total opposite eating disorders (Fiona loves everything calorie, Stu tries to avoid any), Stu insanely suggests they enter a local version of Dancing With the Stars instead…
What follows is a fantastic journey with a lot of ups and downs, sore feet, self-doubt, sweat and tears mixed in with ghosts from the past.
Dancing Queen is a warmhearted and humorous story about self-doubt, dancing, friendship, and the courage to follow your dreams no matter what size you are.
“If you love fast-paced, feel-good books, with snappy dialogue, lots of humor and heart, this is the book for you.”
“Dance your heartbreak away with Dancing Queen.
Flagged by a new program at their mutual workplace for weight issues, co-workers Fiona and Stu are thrown together as an unlikely pair of unwilling participants. When quilting is suggested as a hobby to replace their total opposite eating disorders, they come up with their own plan to enter a dancing contest, a local version of Dancing With the Stars. Fiona, dubbed Fat Fiona nearly all her life, has long given up her ‘closet dream’ of dancing, thanks to her mother, whose bias towards Fiona’s older, thinner, more successful sister, Violet, is as obvious as Fiona’s big butt. Stu, on the other hand, is a calorie-counting, veggie-crunching skinny man with his own set of self-esteem issues, also thanks to sibling bias from a cruel-tongued parent–his father.
The transformation of Fi and Stu’s unlikely friendship into two skilled dance partners is a marvelous story! Charlotte Roth uses stories from both characters’ pasts to deal with life-altering self-image and self-worth issues. It’s a joy to watch them slowly work through feelings of disappointment and heartbreak for ones of self-acceptance and finally hope, eventually leading to forgiveness and much more. With superb character development and a well-executed storyline, Dancing Queen was a joy to read, from start to up-lifting finish. There were several typos but none that took me out of the story, so I’m not deducting for them. I give this highly recommended read a solid five stars! Well done, Ms. Roth!” ~ L. Leger.