64 books like Too Much Temptation

A brilliant thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining book, Jemima is a young lady who is in need of a number of life changes. 

She’s overweight, treated like a skivvy by her flatmates, and belittled by her colleagues.

She does embark on big changes in her life, and when she achieves the goals that she sets for herself, realises that it doesn’t matter how much you change the outside of your body, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.

A definite life lesson and we should also just be kind, because we never know what is happening in someone’s life. 

Rose is dumped by her boyfriend for a thinner woman, throwing her into a body image crisis. But a chef (a chef! How perfect! Or horrific?) makes her appreciate herself just the way she is.

Very, very sexy. It was the first Bella Andre I read (waaaaay back when) and I’ve been a fan since. Much like Too Much Temptation, the fully-realized love scenes with a plus-size heroine (at least, in her mind) are romantic, arousing and so, so satisfying.

He Loves Lucy uses the reality-show trope to hilarious, and lovely perfection. Lucy Cunningham is a PR exec who allows her client, a fitness club, to use her as a weight-loss guinea pig. Trainer Theo Redmond is up to the task, but finds working with Lucy to not be work at all.

I loved all of Susan Donovan’s early romances, but this one has a warmth, charm, and humor that has stuck with me through the years. When thinking about this list, this book was the first one that jumped into my head.

April Whittier is a professional by day, and a fan fiction queen by night. Unbeknownst to her, her best online friend is the star of TV’s biggest show (think Game Of Thrones) who agrees with her about everything the show is doing wrong. Now, due to some harsh online trolls criticizing her weight, she’s going out on a date with him.

I love how different Spoiler Alert is from the others on my list that were written a decade – or two – earlier. The body-positivity mindset is refreshing and so much more emotionally healthy than the fat-duckling-to-thin-swan take. (As much as I enjoy those, too.) April has issues, yes, but never any doubt that she’s as worthy to date a huge star as any size 4. And in fact, questions whether he is worthy of her!

Bea Schumacher is a plus-sized fashion blogger and outspoken critic of the lack of diverse body types in the media and on the reality dating show, Main Squeeze, in particular.

When she is asked to star on the show and pick the man she wishes to marry, Bea agrees, excited about what this might mean for her career and her love life. 

This book gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at reality television and provides a satisfying answer to what is real and what is staged. I loved how the plot of Main Squeeze and the novel formed co-centric rings and how Bea learns to recognize and use her power in both these arenas.

While romance and insights abound, they are also tempered by laugh-out-loud humor, making this read both enjoyable and thought-provoking.

I was teaching high school when this novel came out over twenty years ago, and it immediately struck a chord with me, and with my students. This story of a lifelong friendship and the pain that comes with growing up has so many great characters. But Carmen has always been my favorite. The relationship with her father, her emergence into the (literal) spotlight, and her willingness to speak her mind to her loved ones, make her, for me, the true heroine of this novel. One of my favorite moments is her surprise and wonder when the pants actually fit her, not just her skinny friends. The idea that she had access to all the things they did, regardless of her size, is a beautiful metaphor for living. 

This book is a memoir of the childhood and early adulthood of a woman overshadowed by her own weight.

The writing in this book is beautiful and evocative, particularly the descriptions of food and eating. That being said, this work is, otherwise, a tough read. The author feels unwanted and alone. She never achieves self-love or the sense of belonging she desires. Moore grew up long before size positivity existed and so she focused her energy and strength on changing rather than accepting herself. 

Though it is, at times, an excruciating chronicle of pain, this memoir is an important work because it reminds us how destructive anti-fat bias was in the past, highlighting, as well, how it continues today.

The best way to learn how to write a memoir is to read a lot of memoirs. It expands your sense of the possibilities (“what? I’m allowed to do that?”), provides you with techniques to steal for your own work, helps you identify your distinctive strengths and weaknesses, and inspires you to keep going when self-doubt and weariness swoop in. I could recommend memoirs all day, but here’s a brand new one I’m reading right now that I love. It’s written by a philosophy professor with a skeletal disorder (like me!) and combines reflections on art, beauty, and disability with the author’s personal experience of those things. It’s thought-provoking, funny, and moving, and offers what feels like a direct window into the soul of another human. Isn’t that why we read and love memoirs? So why not write one?

The Body Is Not an Apology is an unflinching argument for making peace with your body.

Body size diversity is just another way humans can differ, but instead, this difference has been weaponized to create hierarchies that dehumanize people of size. The Body Is Not an Apology presents radical self-love as a salve for wounds inflicted by fatphobia. The authors call for radical self-love on a global scale to raise collective compassion and empathy to create a more equitable world.

Beyond dismantling anti-fat bias, this book also has tools for challenging racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia. The Body Is Not an Apology reveals how these systems of oppression work together and in similar ways, and how radical self-love is vital for envisioning and working toward a just world.

A “best of books about chronic illness list” would not be complete without Gay’s heartbreaking memoir.

The bestselling author delves into chronic overeating, PTSD from a trauma she suffered as a young girl, and a complicated relationship with her overweight body. This book is both devastating and devastatingly beautiful. She explores her history with food as a Haitian-American woman as well as society’s expectations of women and women’s bodies. Gay is a true warrior, and she writes her story with guts.

Trigger Warning: this book contains explicit depictions of sexual violence.