Jemima J.

Jemima Jones is a sharp, good-hearted newspaper columnist in London who has spent years overshadowed by her slimmer, glossier colleagues and quietly loved from a distance by her officemate Ben. When she strikes up an online romance with Brad, a Los Angeles gym owner, she sends him a doctored photo — then sets out to become the woman in it, losing a hundred pounds along the way.

The transformation delivers everything Jemima thought she wanted: a new body, a plane ticket to California, and a shot at the glossy American life she has been chasing online. But meeting Brad in person exposes how little they actually have in common, and a discovery about his real feelings for his assistant forces Jemima to reckon with what her makeover did and did not change.

Jane Green's 1998 debut is a comic, fast-moving take on the "ugly duckling" story, weighing body image, online deception and self-worth against an ending that brings Jemima back to the man who liked her all along.