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Women's Fiction
Jemima J : A Novel About Ugly Ducklings and Swans

Jemima J : A Novel About Ugly Ducklings and Swans

List Price: $11.95
Your Price: $9.56
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Light-hearted, Entertaining. A good book for the beach!
Review: Jemima J loses all of her excess weight - in a rather unrealistic fashion, and snags the Californian hunk-of-burning-love Brad. The book is totally silly, yet I couldn't put the damn thing down! Take it for what it is - fiction.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Readers who want an engaging plus-sized Heroine
Review: Should try reading Jennifer Weiner's Good In Bed instead of Jemima J. Not only is the heroine in Weiner's novel a lot more believable, she doesn't have to shed half her body-weight before she finds just the right man who considers her perfect as she is, and the writing is infinitely superior. First objection, there are other surnames beginning with J in this world other than Jones -- and Bridget Jones was here first! I have to agree with other reviewers who have complained that Jemima is a collection of cliche's about overweight women --she is, both before and after her highly unrealistic weight loss. I also must agree that the characters are beyond being shallow, and most of them are walking cliches, too. None of them particularly engaged my interest. Everyone is beautiful, but nobody's very nice or believable. Second objection, the constant changes in point of view in the novel were very annoying and distracting. I found the places where the author talks about Jemima in third person very condescending. Also annoying was the author's treatment of Jemima's roommates, who, once she is thin, are suddenly completely crass and immature, even though they are and always have been thin. Nor did Jane Green have to go so deeply into the personality of one girl who flirts with Jemima's love interest in a bar one evening early in the book. This girl disappears and never comes back, so why do we have to know anything more than that she flirts with Ben in a bar, and Jemima sees them together? Okay, third objection. I don't usually rate the fiction I read according to it's medical plausibility but.... Jemima looses almost half her body weight in three months due to a diet and exercise regime that make anorexia and bulimia sound almost healthy by comparison. There is a passing mention that her personal trainer at the gym thinks she's not as healthy as she looks, but that's about it. After three months of crash dieting and a sudden program of intense vigorous exercising, Jemima has gone from a fat girl to a perfect, gorgeous hardbodied glamor girl and the unhealthiness of this sudden and drastic change in her routine NEVER catches up to her? Suddenly she can forgo all the foods that used to tempt her? She never collapses in exhaustion? Uh-hunh, RIGHT. And, after losing all this weight and finally becoming "visible" to the object of her infatuation, we are asked to believe at the end of the book that Jemima and Ben are a blissful couple, and she NEVER lets it bother her that he once treated her as completely sexless and unworthy of his romantic intentions until she went on a crash diet?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great beach read!
Review: I loved this book. I was unable to put it down from the moment I picked it up. Okay so it's not 'high quality' writing - but I enjoyed it!

And an added bonus - it left me eating healthier!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: like looking in the mirror
Review: This is the first book I have read by Jane Green. I hadn't heard much about it, but it was recommended by a store employee where I purchased it. I really enjoyed this novel because I could honestly relate to Jemima Jones. I know what it is like to be overweight and overlooked or stared upon and I loved how she one day woke up and decided that she wasn't going to be fat anymore. Although I didn't appreciate her motives for her sudden weightloss-fetish (a guy), I still thought it held a lot of motivation. Overall this was a great feel-good novel and for anyone who wants to feel what it's like to be someone else, Jane Green is the author to help you. The one complaint I have is that the narration was a little awkward. Overall, it's still a great book to read!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Likeable, shallow, compulsively readable
Review: Yep, this book has a strange view on weight loss, at first seeming to encourage what sounds like anorexia, then doing an about face in the last chapter. But Jemima J ranks medium high on the list of all these Bridget Jones Clones out there- the way it switches back and fourth between first-person and second-person to be interesting. Same dumb girl get guy and great job ending, but fun nonetheless.

Want better BJ Clones? Read Getting Over It by Anna Maxted, or hell, just read Bridget itself. Then maybe we should all move on with it...surely women can find some other subject to read about besides getting a man!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Thin, yes.... but is she happy????
Review: ...see what the great looks got her, a man who was lying to her, and not a penny to her name. She realized that it wasn't how she looked but that it was what was inside that mattered. Sometimes it takes dramatic changes in your life to realize that what you had was what you wanted and that things were perfect, that YOU were perfect, just the way you are!!!!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Yeah Right, An d I have A bridge for Sale in Brooklyn...
Review: I have to agree with [another reviewer], there is no way Jemima would go from having 3 chins to one in three months and not have a single scare left over. I have lost well over 100 pounds (with exercise) and believe me it does not all snap back into place. I really think this book is dangerous in setting up a fantasy where severe crash dieting results in this perfect outcome. As well as you too can find the man of your dreams as long as you are thin enough for him to actually look at you.

The levels of shallowness is so high there should be a warning sign on the cover. Yet I too had to finish it just to see if it would truely go the distance. And though the author tries to put a helathy twist at the end at having Jemina settle at a healthhy, exceptable size 10, rather than a too skinny 8, it's too little too late. I feel sorry for the heavy women out there that will read this and have their fantasies verified that they will ONLY find happiness once they are thin! I was really disappointed because from the cover I thought Jemima actually found love the way she was, now that would have been a good book. And by the way, the sterotypes, which the book is full of, are aggravating, but the one that really got me was how in the major bookstores in L.A. they don't have any 'real' books, only books on film! This has to be the stupidest thing I have ever read. I grew up in L.A. and though I admit it's not a cultural mecca, there are people there besides film people!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Quick, charming read
Review: I was attracted to this book by the cover and the summary on the back cover. I read the first five pages and thought it was pretty good. So I bought it and I read it very quickly. So it isn't exactly probable (a woman losing 100 pounds in 3 months), but it IS fiction, right? I enjoyed it and was kept on the edge of my seat, waiting for the ending. The ending, to me, was good and much like a fairy tale. This book is definitely not for people under the age of 16, because of the frequent sexual references. However, I would reccommend it to any woman who is single and looking for that fairy tale relationship with the man of your most secret fantasies. Overall, a good, mature read.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent Quick Read
Review: Its a wonderfully insightful book that is also a delightfully quick read. I read the book in just a few days and had a hard time putting it down. The author has a deep understanding what overweight girls are thinking about as you delve into her thoughts, but she also does something I found clever. She takes us outside of Jemima to see what others are thinking and feeling. As the reader, we not only get to follow Jemima through her struggles, we get to see all the other character's struggles with their own lives. It also has an interesting ending, let's just say it pleasantly surprised me. Its not often that I am surprised by an ending, usually you have it all figured out in the beginning. This was a good afternoon read if you like a fun romance.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: full of twists and turns
Review: the beginning of this book started off slow. it was depressing and i had doubts that this would be a book that i wanted to finish reading. the narration was annoying. it was being narrated in third person in parts that made it seem like i was reading a screenplay. that would have been fine, but it interrupted the story. after awhile, it was less and less noticeable as the story got more exciting. and it got very exciting. i followed every emotion that jemima went through, when she was happy, i was, when things didn't work out i was upset and had to skip parts of the story until i knew that things got better, then i could go back and read the parts in between. the book was in no way realistic, but it was fabulous. i read on this site that it was better than "briget jones." it really was.


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