Girl, Ultra-Processed

'Thoughtful, sassy, and full of joy. A gift for a teenage girl - and a very enjoyable read for this adult reader, too' Pandora Sykes 'Heartwarming, hard-hitting YA takedown of diet culture.' Guardian New year, new me! That's what Saffron Saldana tells herself as the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve. Her resolution is the same every year: lose weight. Because Saffron has it hard-wired that weight loss equals happiness. It's what she's been told her whole life - online, in magazines, especially by her own diet-obsessed mother. But dieting is hard. So to escape her own reality, Saffron creates Sydney, a super-slim, AI-generated 'perfect' version of herself. Boys online love Sydney, and for Saffron, it's just a bit of harmless fun. Until the boundaries of her life online and offline begin to blur . . . And one boy in particular makes her question her desire to be someone she's not. Can Saffron find a way back to herself, and learn to love who she actually is? Girl: Ultra-Processed explores what it is like to be a teenage girl in our current body-obsessed world while juggling family drama, friend dynamics, dating, betrayals and major life changes. A searing look at diet culture and all its ugly consequences, from the talented writer of Influential.

Reviews

Amara Sage graduated from the Bath Spa MA for Writing for Young People with a distinction and lives in Bristol with her husband and two dogs. She writes contemporary, own-voice YA fiction that explores issues of body image, mental health, racial identity, and the impact that social media has on all of the above.