The Fat Girls Club: Paris Bound by Lila Johnson

The Fat Girls Club: Paris Bound is the sequel to Lila Johnson’s Fat Girls Club, a fun and emotional novel about a group of friends who gather together to lose weight. As the title suggests, Paris Bound finds the group traveling to Europe, and all of the temptations it provides, as well as a scenic backdrop for the women to bond more deeply.

The three ladies from Kansas City hop over the pond for their first stop in London, where Lila Johnson has taken extra care to guide the reader along with William, Sissy’s brother, while he gives an in-depth tour of the city. Johnson gives a history lesson, with some of the facts so obscure that even a born and bred Londoner would be interested, which is why this novel works so well as a kind of travelogue, in addition to a story about friendship.

As the women move to Paris, the same structure applies, with a comprehensive tour of the city. At times, this veers towards the overly factual, but the tour is always interesting. A greater issue for the book is that the story lacks a sense of deep conflict. Although the women do bicker with each other and, towards the end, face a secret conundrum, the majority of the book is without a central conflict, which is less the case than the first novel in the series.

That said, what Johnson is providing is a vacation on the page, and to that end the book excels as a great source of escape. With three well-drawn and entertaining characters at its center, Paris Bound will satisfy readers of the first book and make new converts of the Fat Girls Club, which has the makings of a long-running series.