Reviews for Through Thick and Thin

The average rating for Through Thick and Thin based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-05-12 00:00:00 Michael Hester this book? no. it was an astonishingly fast read, considering the fact that i felt i was being slowly plodded to my doom. i hated all the characters & didn't care what happened to them. the story follows two sisters, stephanie & meredith. stephanie is a new mom who lives in the suburbs with her husband. she's always been happy & sporty & slim, & meredith has always felt that stephanie had the perfect life. meredith, meanwhile, is a restaurant critic in new york city. she's always been more on the judgmental side, & prone to carrying weight. stephanie is having trouble losing her baby weight, & she's secretly distraught by how distant & aloof her husband has been acting since the baby was born. she decides to start dieting, & meredith invites herself along for the ride...even though dieting is obviously going to be kind of tough for restaurant critic. especially if you're doing some gimmicky diet with a bunch of rules about what kinds of foods you can eat, rather than just eating in moderation & trying to increase your activity level. meredith calls stephanie one day to complain about their diet, & while they're on the phone, stephanie goes into her husband's office & discovers his big secret: he's addicted to vicodin. i almost stopped reading at this point. the vicodin addiction reveal is treated like a REALLY MOTHERFUCKING BIG DEAL, like maybe akin to her opening his mini-fridge & finding it stuffed with severed heads or something. as someone who has dealt with the actual real serious drug addictions of people close to me, i was like, "...vicodin? are you fucking kidding me? the dude takes a vicodin every night & you're going catatonic?" christ. stephanie doesn't tell meredith what she found--she just says she needs a break from their sisterly relationship. meredith is bummed, but she cheers up when she adopts a dog from what sounds like some crazy ladies who set up a tent on the street. i guess it's supposed to be a real dog rescue, but...seriously? a random tent outside central park that specializes in mixed breed daschunds? & they can run your debit card right then & there? it's called identity theft. but whatever. meredith adopts this goddamn motherfucking dog & i pretty much wanted to die for the rest of the book. she is OBSESSED with this dog. i can't even tell you how many times his eyes are described as "wise". listen, lady, he's a dog. he probably eats poop. so give it a rest with thinking he's a "sage". she goes totally bananas buying shit for her dog. she buys books with ideas for activities to do together...even though she lives ACROSS THE STREET FROM CENTRAL PARK. how 'bout taking the little crotchsniffer for a run or something? what the fuck? she buys him CDs to listen to when she's not home--which is almost never, except when she's out reviewing a restaurant. she has an office, but she starts e-mailing in her reviews so she can stay home with her dog. whom she named D.B. sweeney. yeah, after the dude who starred in "the cutting edge". i couldn't make this shit up, it's too awful. also, when she goes out to review restaurants, she wears a disguise. wig, make-up, clothing she wouldn't ordinarily wear, the whole nine. because she doesn't want special service in case the staff twigs to the fact that she's a restaurant reviewer. because nothing says "discreet & nonchalant" like the crazy woman in the wig who smells like dog & orders six different appetizers. but i digress. taking this crazy dog shit to a whole new level, meredith decides her ridiculous little mutt is afraid of thunderstorms (or, as she put it, "inclimate weather;" i believe she means "inclement" weather because "inclimate" is not a word, & that is an embarrassment for the author, the publisher, the editor, et al) & would benefit from MOTHERFUCKING DOG YOGA. pardon me while i vomit in horror & disgust. just in case the popularization & commodification of yoga among over-privileged urbanites hadn't gone far enough already, now we have gary, the green-eyed "doga" master, who teaches a weekly drop-in class for yuppies & their spoiled dogs. & of course meredith thinks gary is dreamy. she joins his regular people-only sunday morning yoga class, & goes so far as to invite him to join her at a restaurant later in the week. i was so icked out. trying to date your yoga teacher is on par with trying to date your therapist, as far as i'm concerned. it crosses a boundary. but he agrees to dinner & obviously seems to think it's some kind of date. but meredith starts having second thoughts when he says that he loves living in brooklyn, finds sea urchin delicious, & is uninterested in creating a doggie yoga DVD program (he wouldn't want to sully the pure spirit of dog yoga with crass commercialism, after all). he folds her napkin into a swan while she's in the bathroom, & when she had second thoughts & decided he wasn't the right match for her, i was ON BOARD, because the guy sounded like a motherfucking toolbox. anyway, back in suburbia, stephanie convinces her husband to enroll in rehab after his therapist fails to get him to lay off the vicodin. REHAB. for VICODIN. are you fucking with me right now? maybe vicodin is a way bigger deal that i thought. i just can't really get too excited about people having addictions to medications that are PRESCRIBED TO THEM. i mean, it's not like he's selling his body on the street for this shit. the dude had knee surgery. so he's still taking them a year later. who cares? he doesn't even drink. anyway. stephanie's husband goes to rehab & she has success with weight watchers. meredith keeps going to yoga & decides not to diet anymore. meredith & stephanie reconcile. stephanie tells meredith about the whole vicodin/rehab thing & meredith manages not to laugh her right outta town. instead, meredith walks out of a blind date, packs her dog, & goes to the 'burbs to introduce her sister to her dog. then she goes back to the city & takes the train all the way out to brooklyn to show up romantically at gary the yoga instructor's front door, because she has realized she needs to "reverse her namaste" & basically start wanting him or something. god, this book SUCKED. then again, i hate dogs.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-04-13 00:00:00 Robert Coursey I really loved Pug Hill and a couple of other books I have read by Alison Pace. I had to work at it to get through this one though. Pace very definitely knows what it is to be devoted to a dog and her descriptions of the various diets and their associated challenges were spot on. However, half of the book laying the groundwork for the split between the sisters and before the dog even shows up feels like time spent with people you don't really like but feel obligated toward. I am glad I pressed through. It's worth reading but not the first of her books I would recommend.