Cherry Baby (publication day April 14, 2026) is only the second Rainbow Rowell book I’ve read, and wow!! (I read her amazing historical YA romance Eleanor and Park ten years ago!) Cherry Baby is fat positive in the best ways, and though Cherry has to deal with anti-fat bias (as we all sadly do in this world) it doesn’t stop her from making the choices that are best for her.
As the book opens, Cherry is at a bar to see her favorite band–she rarely goes out anymore, since she is the brains of her department at work and is taking care of the Great Pyrenees/Newfoundland dog mix named Stevie Nicks, and her husband Tom is in Hollywood overseeing his webcomic-turned movie called Thursday. The world doesn’t know that they are headed for divorce, although it’s been clear to her for about six months. Thursday is vaguely autobiographical, and her character is called Baby–in the webcomic, she is obviously fat, and the main male character thinks she is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.
While at the bar, she sees an old friend from college–Russ–who is also divorced, and who she had a crush on though he was her best friend’s boyfriend. Russ is definitely interested now when he finds out that she and her husband are getting a divorce, and they end up leaving the concert together to go to Cherry’s house. The sex is as good as she imagined, though it is weird since she had been married to Tom for eight years. So Cherry and Russ start dating–he is sweet, and very attracted to her, as she is to him, although he is not Tom.
Meanwhile, the trailer for Thursday has just come out, and she has to deal with the group texts from her four sisters (all but one are also fat; and the one who isn’t, Hope, they all think is taking Ozempic because she’s lost 100 pounds), and everyone commenting about the actress who plays Baby in the Thursday movie (a thin actress with padding) and comparing her to Cherry. And then Tom comes home, staying with his Dad, and they agree to start the painful task of going through the house to separate their life.
There are flashbacks to when Cherry met Russ, and when she met Tom, and how things went wrong. Things with Russ seem to be going well, until they are at a holiday party/ movie premiere and the Thursday trailer comes on. Russ says something about Cherry’s body that he shouldn’t have. And Cherry’s body is nonnegotiable.
So now Cherry is dealing both with this breakup and all of the feelings about splitting with Tom, all at the same time. And even though she didn’t want Stevie, Tom now wants to take Stevie with him to California! Cherry doesn’t want that, either. And she ends up spending the day with her skinny sister and her Mom, and they finally talk about Hope’s weight loss. Hope had been the person that younger Cherry had looked up to–she had great clothes, a boyfriend, a good job–all while being fat–so Cherry knew she could be that person, too. But now that Hope is skinny, Cherry isn’t so sure.
When Tom rescues Cherry’s Christmas Eve, I was so relieved! I think some would call this a second chance romance, but it’s so much more! It’s about second chances, yes, in more than one way, but it’s also about fame and anti-fatness, and how to navigate this world of GLP-1s as a fat person. It is so good! Though there is anti-fatness, I love how Rowell portrayed Cherry as fighting back against it, and not letting it change how she lived her life. So it is clearly fat-positive!
Reading While Fat 