Heads up: I received an advanced reader copy of this book. Many thanks to HarperCollins UK and NetGalley.

Rating: 🤷🏻‍♀️

While I was reading Digging Dr. Jones by Olivia Jackson, I couldn’t help but think about an episode of Bob’s Burgers called “The Cook, the Steve, the Gayle, & Her Lover.” Specifically I couldn’t help but think about Steve, a one-off character Bob’s trying to impress and become friends with who happens to also be an archaeologist. In the episode, Bob is disappointed to learn that archaeology is nothing like the Indiana Jones movies.

Digging Dr. Jones takes the opposite approach. Not just in that both of our main characters’ surnames are Jones (which leads to a mixup that sets off the story) but also in that they end up in multiple dangerous situations essentially graverobbing, dealing with booby-trapped ruins, and coming face to face with more than a few skeletons.

Was this book believable? To be honest, not in the slightest. There was literally no archaelogy to be found in these pages. But was the adventure fun regardless? Absolutely.

So then when do I feel so disappointed by it?

In a word: fatphobia. The book includes  multiple throwaway comments about body size and watching one’s figure and it honestly grated. Because the author could have just left it out! We didn’t need to know Andrew didn’t eat bread because he was a self-described “chubby kid” so he cared a lot about keeping his body fat-free as an adult. Nor did we need any discussion about Adriana’s stomach being “flat enough” like happens before she bones Dr. Jones the first time. It added nothing. (Related thing I hated: Adriana’s insistence that Brie needed Botox, as if her forehead moving when she made expressions was a problem.)

It just felt extra gross when considering the current landscape of beauty and how aging has become the enemy, and an obsession with skinniness is returning. It bummed me out for it to show up in an adventure rom com.

So yeah. This would have been a fun, if unbelievable, romp. But I ended up feeling let down.