The Griffin Sisters’ Greatest Hits

The Griffin Sisters’ Greatest Hits (publication day April 8, 2025) by Jennifer Weiner is the kind of book I typically gravitate to.

It’s about sisters, and music, and it has a fat main character, who is also likely on the autism spectrum. One sister is fat and very talented, the other is conventionally attractive but that’s her only talent. They are discovered and are the newest thing for a short time, releasing one album, and then tragedy strikes and they aren’t seen again for twenty years. Cassie, the talented sister, runs away to Alaska, hiding in plain sight. Zoe, the attractive sister, marries and lives the mom life in suburban New Jersey, with an 18-year old daughter, Cherry, who has inherited Cassie’s talents. Cherry’s drive to be a musician and singer propels the story along, which alternates between the present and the past and all three main characters’ viewpoints.

Full disclosure: I’ve been a fan and reader of Weiner for many years, and I subscribe to her The Inevitable Substack because she was writing fat characters before anyone else was, back as far as 2002’s Good in Bed. I’ve been to one of her book events and own several books that she has signed.

As noted in my reviews for That Summer (2021) and The Summer Place (2022), I have mixed feelings about her portrayal of fat characters. So much so, that I skipped her most recent The Breakaway, and I only read The Griffin Sisters’ Greatest Hits because I was able to get it for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I know, I’m still giving her money through the Substack newsletter, so I’m not completely consistent.

Generally, I feel like she portrays the anti-fat bias that her fat characters experience and internalize, without enough of her characters pushing back for better treatment that is not based on their outward appearance. Also, I don’t think she includes enough criticism of the way fat people are treated. It’s like they are subjected to it but they don’t do anything about it or try to effect any changes to the way they’re perceived. I’m grateful that she includes fat characters, as so many authors do not, but I wish that there were better outcomes for them.

Here, for example, the extraordinarily talented, but fat sister, Cassie, thinks of herself in derogatory ways I won’t repeat, which is very jarring to read, though probably true, given the way the world teaches fat girls to think of themselves. I want Weiner to create a fat character who doesn’t think of herself that way rather than repeat, and therefore perpetuate the anti-fat bias that we all have to deal with.

I thought the way she portrayed Cassie’s likely autism was fairly accurate, although it wasn’t clear whether Cassie’s awkwardness was resulting from her physical appearance or her neurodivergence, or both.

So I can’t really recommend it because I started this blog as a way of raising awareness of the way fat characters are portrayed in the hopes of changing those perceptions. I can’t recommend a book that portrays fat characters the way they’ve always been portrayed, even if they are also portrayed as immensely talented and loved. It’s not enough to just include a fat character in a story and portray the world as it is if that fat character is also not going to get treated the way fat people should be treated.