Mantequero by Jenny Twist – 3 stars
June Blacker is a sensible, respectable woman – a language teacher beloved by her pupils. But she seems doomed to become an old maid. She has never had a lover because nobody wants to kiss a fat girl. And June is fat – very fat indeed.
But then she meets Ignacio, her holiday romance. Ignacio thinks she is beautiful. He wants to kiss her over and over again. And a strange thing happens to June. She starts losing weight – a lot of weight. Could Ignacio be THE MANTEQUERO?
This short story is of the stereotypical unloved fat girl who goes off to find something and winds up finding more than she bargained for. That said, June seems like a very believable person, and her family struck me as the same. The characters felt honest even as they conformed to expectations.
I wish there was less time spent explaining June’s past and more time spent developing the present. It felt like I was told a lot but shown very little. What little I did see interested me enough that I would happily have read twice as much – if it was shown more.
The author has a good writing style overall, I just wish she’d exercise her obvious skills more to develop what could have been a very rich tale. Even so, it’s an interesting take on the whole vampire thing.
I received a copy of this story in exchange for an honest review.
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