Search - Jemima J: A Novel About Ugly Ducklings and Swans

So I don't normally get into this kind of read... I in fact, typically hate this kind of read. Furthermore I'm a sci-fi reading goth girl who likes to poke fun (all in good fun, I swear!!(-=) at this kind of read and it's readers....However this time around it worked for a few reasons...

1) I'm fat.
2) It sort of turns into a "Hey bitchy skinny girl, now that I've lost the weight, they want ME! You're actually rather vapid! HA!" kind of novel and that is very 'me'.
3) I enjoyed the unrealistic descriptions of what she ate and how she lost the weight.... because I got into the ridiculousness of it all.

So if you're a hardcore girl-book fan... and not too picky, this would be a good book. Or if you're kinda like me you'll enjoy it too.... Just don't read it expecting a long and lucious romance because you just won't get it.

Who cares if a fitness centre's owner's wife is fat anyways...???

I picked up this book because most of the reviews said it was great. I continued reading it because several of the reviews said it would pick up after 150 pages or so.

It did indeed pick up, but the writing style continued to grate on my nerves until the very last page. The way the story jumps continually from first to third person made it read more like a play manuscript than a novel.

I also had issues with the description of the main character both when she was "fat" and "skinny". Being told at one point that a size 10 "is no longer skinny" sealed the deal on my dislike.

Basic plot if fat girl loves handsome guy, who only sees her as a friend. Of course, she loses all the weight, gets a make-over, and the guy friend falls for her---although conveniently, he realizes it's the inner her he loves. Um-hmmm. But as ever, Green's writing is fresh and amusing, the repartee is snappy, and you can't help but root for the hapless Jemima as she falls from one crazy situation into another.

Jemima Jones is overweight. About one hundred pounds overweight. Treated like a maid by her thin and social-climbing roommates, and lorded over by the beautiful Geraldine (less talented but better paid) at the Kilburn Herald, Jemima finds that her only consolation is food. Add to this her passion for her charming, sexy, and unobtainable colleague Ben, and Jemima knows her life is in need of a serious change. When she meets Brad, an eligible California hunk, over the Internet, she has the perfect opportunity to reinvent herself - as JJ, the slim, beautiful, gym-obsessed glamour girl. But when her long-distance Romeo demands that they meet, she must conquer her food addiction to become the bone-thin model of her e-mails - no small feat. With a fast-paced plot that never quits and a surprise ending no reader will see coming, Jemima J is the chronicle of one woman's quest to become the woman she's always wanted to be, learning along the way a host of lessons about attraction, addiction, the meaning of true love, and, ultimately, who she really is.

This is such a good book. One of the best Jane Green has written.

A very good read. Get inside the mind of a young woman, who is overweight. Feel her pain and anguish and then her determination to overcome. Wonderful insight, great outcome. You will love the journey.