A freshman from Fischer Hall is found at the bottom of an elevator shaft, and everyone in charge is relieved to call it an accident. Kids ride on top of the cars for fun; they call it elevator surfing. The assistant director of the dorm is not convinced. Girls, she points out, don’t elevator-surf. That is the opening problem of the first Heather Wells book. It was Meg Cabot‘s first mystery for adults, published by Avon at the end of 2005.
What Is the Name of Meg Cabot’s Size 12 Series?
The official name is the Heather Wells mystery series, named after the narrator. Readers often call it the Size 12 series, because the sizes run through the titles. A People blurb quoted on the author’s site uses the same name. The first two books carry the joke in their names, and the last one brings it back in a wedding dress.
The First Book, and the Whole Series in Order
Yes, this is where to start. The five novels follow one heroine, one dorm and one slow romance, so the order matters:
- Size 12 Is Not Fat (2005)
- Size 14 Is Not Fat Either (2006)
- Big Boned (2007)
- Size 12 and Ready to Rock (2012)
- The Bride Wore Size 12 (2013)
The first three came from Avon, the last two from William Morrow. As of October 2026 no sixth book has been announced, so the series is complete at five.
From Teen Pop Sensation to Assistant Hall Director
Heather was a teenage star until she gained weight. The record label, owned by her fiancé’s father, dropped her. The fiancé, boy-band singer Jordan Cartwright, took up with a size 2 singer called Tania Trace. Her mother left the country with her savings. Now in her late twenties, Heather runs a freshman residence hall at New York College in Manhattan as assistant director. She took the job partly for the free tuition.
She lives in a brownstone owned by Jordan’s brother, Cooper, a private investigator she has a quiet crush on. Her ex-boyfriend keeps turning up, which is awkward, since his brother is now her landlord. When a second student dies the same way, the college still wants the story to go away. Heather starts asking questions in a building she knows better than anyone, and the person behind the deaths starts to notice her.
Our Review: The Narrator Carries It, the Puzzle Is Light
Heather’s voice is the reason to read this. She is funny about herself without being sorry for herself, and the rapid first-person narration made Publishers Weekly predict readers would laugh hard. Most chapters open with a lyric from one of her own songs, a running joke that works better than it should.
The campus is the second strength. The author knows how a residence hall runs: the front desk, the student workers and the administrators. Those administrators care more about the college’s name than its students. That gives the mystery a closed world with its own rules.
The puzzle is the weak part. Booklist found most of the supporting cast two-dimensional, though it liked the plot twists. Kirkus called the book appealing to the kid in anyone, which is fair praise and a fair warning. Read it for Heather, Cooper and Fischer Hall, not for a fiendish clue trail.
What Does the Title Mean?
Heather wears a size 12, which the publisher’s blurb calls the average for the American woman. In the music business that was enough to end her career. She is content with her body; the people around her are not. A skinny rival, a toxic ex and a few colleagues treat her as overweight. The book lets their comments sound as silly as they are. Nobody here is obese, and the novel is not about obesity. It is about the perspective of a woman who refuses to be ashamed of an ordinary figure. Some readers today find the repeated weight remarks tiring, even when the joke is on the speakers.
Who Is Meg Cabot?
She was born in 1967 in Bloomington, Indiana, and lives in Key West, Florida. She is best known for The Princess Diaries, the young adult series that became two Disney films. For about ten years she was an assistant hall director at New York University, and her author bio says the job occasionally inspired this series. Publishers Weekly noted that New York College is a stand-in for NYU. That inside knowledge is why the campus scenes ring true.
Quick Facts
| Title | Size 12 Is Not Fat |
|---|---|
| Author | Meg Cabot |
| Series | Heather Wells Mysteries, book 1 of 5 |
| First published | 2005, Avon, paperback original |
| Setting | Fischer Hall, New York College (fictional), Manhattan |
| Sleuth | Heather, a former teen pop star turned assistant hall director |
| Audiobook | Narrated by Sandy Rustin, 9 h 44 min (HarperAudio, 2016); an earlier 2007 recording by Justine Eyre is out of print |
| Next book | Size 14 Is Not Fat Either (2006) |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it a cozy mystery?
Close to one. It is a funny amateur-sleuth story with a strong chick-lit side, and the deaths happen off the page. It is not entirely clean: there is one sex scene, and the climax gets genuinely scary.
Has the series been adapted for TV or film?
No. We found no adaptation or announced project. Her screen adaptations are The Princess Diaries films and a few TV movies from her young adult books.
Is there an audiobook?
Yes. Sandy Rustin reads the unabridged HarperAudio edition from 2016, which runs 9 hours 44 minutes.
What should I read after it?
Our own pick has the same mix of comedy, romance and an unlucky heroine. Try Janet Evanovich’s One for the Money, the start of the Stephanie Plum series. For more like it, browse our funny cozy mysteries.