Jemima, you suck.

God, I hate the book Jemima J.

Several years ago when it came out, a friend of mine sent it to me because she said it was wonderful.  It's about an overweight girl who meets someone fabulous on the internet, decides to lose weight, and goes to see him after she gets thin.  I love chick lit and I love books about fat girls, so I was eager to read it.

The rest of this post will probably have a lot of spoilers about this ridiculous book, so if you haven't read it and you want to, probably best to skip this post.

Anyway. So Jemima Jones is portrayed as being the fattest fuck in all of England.  No one is as fat as Jemima. She's got triple chins.  She puts the ass in massive.  Her stomach is huge as hell.  She's FAAAAAAAAAAAAAT.

Naturally, she has a thin and beautiful girl friend, thin and beautiful roommates, and a huge crush on the hottest man ever.

So then she discovers the internet and chat rooms.  And, as it happens, she lies like a dummy to this guy she starts chatting with.  Hey, we've all been there!!  When it turns out that the guy she's chatting with actually is extremely fit and gorgeous as all get out, Jemima decides to join a gym.

Awesome. No matter what the catalyst is, getting healthy is NEVER a problem.

But here's where the book loses me.  No, not just loses me.  Makes me angry!

Jemima goes into the gym for her assessment with a trainer. He says he needs to weigh her. Okay, okay...I'm with you so far.  This actually happens.  Jemima is sad about getting on the scale. Hey, been there, too.  And then the weight pops up on the scale.

204 pounds.

Yes, I wrote that right.

Jemima Jones, the fattest thing in all of England, is 204 pounds.

A little bit later we discover that she's 5'7 in height.  I went over to My Body Gallery and popped in those measurements.  Do you know what a woman who is 5'7 and 205 pounds looks like?

Get the fuck out of town.

So Jemima basically starves herself, works out a lot, and gets to 120 pounds in a few months.  She flies off to meet the gorgeous Brad, who conveniently owns a gym, falls in love with him, and then gets fucked over when it turns out that he actually likes fat girls.  Then the guy she had originally had a crush on sees her thin and falls in love with her.

Well then.

This book would have been so so much better had  Jemima like, you know, actually BEEN fat.  Or if her first crush had loved her despite her weight and had been too shy to tell her.  Or if she'd just been happy enough to get fit despite all these men.

I hate this book.