Keeping The Moon

Has anyone else noticed that all the main characters in Sarah Dessen's books have famous parents? In This Lullaby, the main character has a dad who wrote a Number 1 hit song and a mom who writes popular romance novels. In Someone Like You, Halley has a famous therapist for a mother and her father has his own radio show that the whole town listens to. And in Keeping the Moon, Colie's mother is Kiki, an aerobics queen/fitness trainor. You know, the type who makes her own exercise tapes, has her own brand of workout material, wears Spandex and leotards, and has her own brand of low-fat food, complete with her own transformation story on the back.
Because in Keeping the Moon, Colie and her mother used to be fat. Really fat. But after a strange twist of fate, they lost all the weight and became rich after Colie's mother went from Katharine to Kiki and became rich and famous. That's why she has to leave Colie over the summer, to go on a fitness tour in Europe. Colie's being forced to stay with her aunt Mira in a middle-of-nowhere town in South Carolina called Colby. So, for Colie, this summer's going to suck. Until she gets a job at The Last Chance, a little restaurant up the road from her aunt's house. And until she meets her neighbor, a guy named Norman who seems to really like her...
The problem with Colie is, she has no self-esteem. She's spent so many years being fat and teased all through school that she walks along looking like a wounded puppy. But hopefully, with a little help from the other waitresses at The Last Chance and her aunt Mira (who has no problem with being eccentric and overweight and the talk of the town) she might be able to see herself not a caterpillar, but as a butterfly.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the book, when she's getting off the train in Colby and discovers Norman has been sent to pick her up and take her to Mira's.

"I was immediately mortified to see the entire Kiki line right there next to my stuff. The Kiki Buttmaster, a carton of Kiki-Eats, the dozen new FlyKiki videos and inspirational tapes, plus a few more boxes of vitamins and fitness wear with my mother's smiling face plastered across them.
"Wow," Norman said. He picked up the Buttmaster, turning it in his hands. "What's this for?"
"I'll get that," I said, grabbing it from him. For the entire trip down I'd imagined myself in Colby as mysterious, different; the dark stranger, answering no one's questions. This image was significantly harder to maintain while lugging a Buttmaster in front of the only boy I'd seen in the past year who didn't automatically assume I was a sl**."
(pg. 8)

Here's another really inspirational part of the book.

"I don't believe in failure. Because by simply saying you've failed, you've admitted you attempted. And anyone who attempts is not a failure. Those who truly fail in my eyes are the ones who nevery try at all. The ones who sit on the couch and whine and moan and wait for the world to change for them."
(pg. 209)