Jemima J
Author: Jane Green
343 Pages
My Rating: 4 Stars
It is a story of an overweight journalist who does not get the best treatment from her social-climbing roommates and always feels inferior to her less talented but better-paid co-worker Geraldine. At the Kilburn Herald in London where she works, it seems she is stuck at the bottom. Her only ally is food although she knows she needs serious change in order to be noticed by her charming colleague, Ben. When she meets Brad, a blond Californian hunk, over the Internet, she sees it as an opportunity to reinvent herself as JJ. JJ, like the women in magazines she collects, is charming, glamorous, and gym-obsessed. When Brad decides to meet with her, she decides to conquer her food addiction and just be like the woman in her dreams. After giving up food coupled with serious workouts at the gym and makes exercise as highest priority, she has transformed herself from Jemima J to JJ. She flies to California and meets Brad, who turns out to be a man every woman would kill for.
I will stop there because I do not want to spoil it for those who'd like to read it. I love the story, the journey JJ takes gives the reader eye-watering laughs. However, I just do not like the way that author told the story. It switches from third person to first person all throughout the book so it is like sometimes Jemima is telling us the story, and then it jumps to the author now telling us the story. Reading through it, I understand why the author chose such style of writing but it would have been possible to keep it first-person, just so the reader would feel more connected to the character as if the reader is there - reason why I did not give it 5 stars.
