This bold and body-positive author always manages to hit the right note in her YA novels of being true to you no matter your size or sexuality.

Taking place in the small town of Clover City, Texas, Murphy weaves a realistic setting filled with small town charm that isn’t sterotypical of Texas despite its tiny city landscape. Rather it is filled with Southernism that lends it a cozy charm while its youth bring a fresh modern perspective.

I’ll start off with Dumplin which is the first book in the series and is pretty well known thanks to its Netflix adaptation. Catching the ending of it when my roommate was watching it is what inspired me to read it in the first place, and it is truly a great, engaging story.

Willowdean Dickenson is the daughter of a former Clover CIty Miss Teen Blue Bonnet winner, a high honor since Clover City prides itself on football and its pagents. Unfortunately, not many people believe Willowdean can follow her mother’s footsteps because she’s fat. Yes, I said fat and Willowdean says so too because she’s confident despite her weight. After all, why let an arbitrary construct as her looks stop her from feeling like she deserves happiness, love or feeling beautiful. The whole world (and her mom) may encourage her to lose weight but Will is uninterested. She’s fine as she is and she’s not interested in pagents anyway since it consumes so much of her mom’s life and looms of Will’s like a shadow.

However, after a thrilling summertime fling with her long-time crush and co-worker at Harpy’s Burgers, Bo ends with her humiliation when she realizes Bo doesn’t want to be seen in public with her, Willow decides she’s entering the pagent. She hates how insecure, how ugly she feels after realizing Bo doesn’t want to be with her and wants to reclaim the confidence she had before. She also hopes to regain some of her closeness with her best friend, Ellen who seems to be drifting away from her.

However, her signing up encourages fellow outcasts, Millie, Amanda, and Hannah and Willowdean’s statement becomes a full-on revolution!

I just love Willowdean! I love how confident yet how flawed she is as she struggles with feeling a fraud and taking her own advice to heart in embracing her full and fat body. Plus Willowdean’s temper and her snap judgements do get her into trouble with her friends, but that’s part of the growing pains Murphy does so well to depict. Ellen and Willowdean’s friendship gets particular mention here as she explores the divide in weight perception between the two but the strength of friendship making through life’s ups and downs.

Willowdean’s new friends are a fun bunch from Millie’s optimism, Amanda’s own special brand of confidence and Hannah’s surly badassness. Hannah is particularly closed-off so the moment Willowdean and Hannah share during a sleepover is quite poignant. Plus their time at the Dolly Parton drag show is just so fun!

Which reminds me that Parton features strongly here, echoing why Dolly is such an icon and why she’s so inspiring. She created and goes after the life she wants which is what this book is all about. The Dolly Parton also relates to another important connection of Willowdean with her late Aunt Lucy who recently died and who shared Willowdean’s weight issues. While Lucy’s fear of being seen in her fat bulky form prevented her from seizing life, it also serves as an example, and compass for Willowdean. I also related a bit to the grief Willowdean is dealing with, unable to let go of Lucy’s belongings for fear of forgetting her as if she never existed.

Willowdean’s close relationship with Lucy is even more of a loss considering her opposing views with her mother. It’s tough especially as Rosie seems blinded from Willowdean’s words, unable to see past the fat. There are some good moments but mainly hard ones and its not fully resolved but it is realistic.

As for Willowdean’s love life, she continues to miss Bo despite his abrupt jerkiness yet Murphy manages to bring Bo back to the good side, owning up to his mistakes while Willowdean tackles her own fears of the jokes that will undoubtedly come from people seeing them together. Willowdean also attracts a sweet admirer in Mitch that I almost wish Willowdean chose him. He’s such so sweet and nice, and I understand why he doesn’t forgive her for tringing him along. So does she. Luckily, he gets his own happy ending in the next book.

I do wish there had been a bit more about the pagent but as Willowdean had been participating as a statement instead of trying to win, it’s understandable why it was pushed to the side as it echoes Willowdean’s disinterest amidst the chaos of her personal relationships. But don’t worry, when the big pagent comes, they all sparkle in their own ways especially Willowdean’s big moment.

Next up, Puddin might be my favorite? I can’t quite decide but it does continue Murphy’s momentum in her themes of identity, friendship and confidence.

Millie was a star in her own right in Dumplin and takes center stage here as she decides to forgoe fat camp this summer for her dream Broadcasting and Journalism Camp sponsored by the University of Austin. Yes, her size might count her out in some people’s eyes as not fitting the photogenic aesthetics of the field but Millie wants to be that trustworthy source of facts and reliability for others. She has to try and go after what she knows what to do. After all her size shouldn’t discount the fact that she’s prepared, she has the voice and even the well-timed puns.

She only has one fear. Telling her mom her change of plans as dieting has shaped so much of her mother and Millie’s lives, serving as a way to bond. But that takes a backseat when her Uncle Vernon and Aunt Inga’s gym, Down for the Count, is vandalized by a group of masked girls, costing thousands in damages. But in that crowd, Millie is able to identify one suspect, Callie Reyes, the co-captain of the Clover City Shamrocks dance team.

Callie is pissed. The Shamrocks have a chance at Nationals but the school budget won’t give their team any funding. Not for a bus, not for new costumes, nothing. Apparently the money is reserved for the failing football team and their new gym as if that would improve their small chances of winning anything ever. Worse still is that the local gym, Down for the Count also pulls their sponsorship. So what starts as a little prank to blow off steam ends up with her taking the fall for the Shamrock’s crimes. Her chance at becoming captain of the Shamrock over Melissa is squashed. In fact, she’s not allowed back onto the team this year or next year. It’s a huge blow to all her dreams of following her mother’s legacy. Worse than becoming a phariah from the team but she has to pay off her debt to the gym by working there for free.

This confluence of events creates an unexpected friendship between Millie and Callie that they never realized they needed.

Now I must start off that Callie is not the nicest person. She’s a bit of a brat and her no bars hold honesty (aka bitchiness as readers will remember from Dumplin) is not endearing in the least as she continues to see herself as a victim for her own actions. Plus her hot temper and her (pretty epic) revenge on the team that turned their backs on her does not make her look better. But she’s self-aware. She doesn’t say things she doesn’t mean and her boldness is what encourages Millie to go after what she wants because Callie would hold it to her otherwise.

Meanwhile, Millie is a sweetheart as usual whose own brand of confidence, her meddling and her optimistic outlook in life are very uplifting. It’s not that she’s unrealistic but she believes that everyone has a choice. She chooses to see things glass half-full because it’s better to help someone up than push someone down and cyncism only makes you miserable.

That’s why her fights against her mother and her rejection is so disheartening as Millie’s optimstic view of the world takes a nosedive that maybe she should accept reality. The world of newscasting won’t accept big girls like her.

Luckily, she has her friends to push her forward just as Millie helps Callie dial back her abrasiveness and see her expulsion from the Shamrocks in a new way. What will Callie be without her dance team, without the external perceptions of others? What does she want?

Speaking of friendships, I was hoping for a bit more from Amanda as she’s Millie’s bestie but because of Millie’s preoccupation with softening Callie, she neglects her with the story touches upon. A nice moment but I still wish to have gotten to know Amanda more.

In the romance section, Millie’s burgeoning romance with Malik was sweet from her wisdom-teeth painkiller induced texts of frustration to their movie date to working together on her audition clip. They’re just very sweet and fit well. And remember Mitch from above? Well he and Callie start a something new that is nice to witness. Mitch feels a bit different from Dumplin but that might just be the fact that people act differently with different people and Callie’s edgier tude is quite different from Willowdean’s kind disinterest as you can get.

But mainly the book is about friendship and Murphy delivers it to a T, the close undescribable bond that you need to bring out the best in you, to understand how others may limit you (in Callie’s case racism while Millie still deals with fatphobia) and support you in tough times and have laughs with.

Finally, Pumpkin brings pride to prom! Possibly the last in the series as it takes place during the senior year of our favorite Clover City teens. Wylon Brewer may be out but he does his best to blend in. After all a femme, gay, fat boy is enough of a target on his own. All he wants is to get through these last few months before getting to be his full, prideful self when he gets to Austin.

Unfortunately his plans don’t go quite so smoothly. Not only does his twin, Clementine forgoe their plans of going to college together in Texas so she can go to Athens but she also accidentally helps Wylon’s nemesis leak his drag audition for the Fiercest of All. Now echoes of his altar ego, Pumpkin Patch, call down the halls. Then he gets nominated as prom queen as one big fat joke.

Clem’s girlfriend Hannah was also nominated as a joke for Prom King to be exact but she convinces him to stay in the race so they can break Clover City High norms and leave one big blasting legacy. Wylon concedes to the plan but he isn’t happy with whom he’s paired with for prom, Tucker. Tucker may be a hot but he’s a jerk that has always ditched Wylon at every chance he gets. Or so Wylon thinks. . . .

Pumpkin gets into the freeness and joy that comes from performing in drag and why it becomes a huge part of identities. It serves as an outlet for Wylon and an escape from the drama of his life to being the proud, confident drama queen he knows he is inside. He doesn’t have to hide his spark, with drag he can live it and people with cheer. And with the focus on drag, readers return to The Hideaway along with Dale and Lee.

Small nitpick, Lee Wei is written as Lee Way in this book. Maybe this was on purpose as most drag queens seem to have punny names like Peppa Roni. Plus it has been two years since we’ve seen Lee in Dumplin so maybe she changed her name to follow suit. Or maybe it’s a typo. I’m not sure. It just caught my attention.

He also comes to realize that is true outside of drag. He had always seen Clover City as something to get through. A bit of small town stereotype that he loves but also is ready to leave. But this small town is more open-minded than he thinks as evidenced by the popularity that slowly grows with his and Hannah’s nomination. His nemesis, Kyle is more than a jerk who spits in the face of fatness and judges Wylon as Wylon feels. His bond with his twin is more than their geography. His fatness is not a deal-breaker or a barometer of which everyone is judging as he believes thanks to his disasterous interactions with Tucker and Lucas.

Speaking of Tucker, I enjoyed Wylon’s romance with him and how Murphy slowly reveals pertinent information regarding to Tucker’s behavior that sheds new light on his interactions with Wylon. In fact, I feel this is the most well-developed of all the love interests. Since the books come from the POV from one person in each couplet, the significant others feel filtered through the teen’s thoughts, biases, etc. Tucker manages to feel more in depth as their conversations go a bit more into his home life, feelings, flaws etc.

Once again, friendship and family are major components to Wylon’s journey with more spotlight placed on Hannah and Wylon’s family being delightfully supportive compared to the slightly hostile difficulties of the previous daughter-maternal pairs.

So if you’ve made it to the end of this post, you can see how much I enjoyed the world Murphy created in Clover City and her relatable, inspiring teens whose flaws and strengths make a breath of fresh air in the YA mainstream, weaving together sexuality, body-postivity, adolescence and identity in one engaging book.