Hello my lovely readers, I have a lot of books to review and catch up on and what better way than to start with my first 5 star read of 2025, Girl, Ultra-Processed by Amara Sage. It’s no surprise as I completely loved her debut Influential a couple of years, I met her a couple of years ago at YALC as l’m just a huge fan of her writing.
Girl, Ultra-Processed: A bold, body-positive YA about friendship, dating and self-love. by Amara Sage Published by Faber Faber on January 16, 2025
Genres: Contemporary
Amazon | Waterstones
Goodreads
A searing look at diet culture and all its ugly consequences, from the talented writer of Influential.
Girls like Sydney don't get rejected, because girls like Sydney aren't real . . . when I'm Sydney my body doesn't matter. I'm wearing hers.
Saffron Saldana can't stop comparing herself to the other women in her life and she only feels good when she is catfishing boys online. She welcomes in the New Year wishing she was as desirable as her best friend Poppy or as confident as her SlimIt coach mother.
But when Saffron takes on an alter ego, Sydney, an impossibly beautiful AI-generated Instagram model, she finds she has control over how others perceive her for the first time in a long time, and she likes the power. Pretending to be Sydney seems like a bit of harmless fun, but suddenly Saffron finds she is in too deep, with no idea how to stop what she has set in motion.
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.
There is something about relatable YA Contemporary like Influential and Girl, Ultra-Processed that I just love and I find it so unique, so special. These books give us hope, they strip back the layers of society we live in and various toxic cultures that teenagers and young adults find themselves addicted too. It enables young people to not feel alone and that in itself is a quality very rare to find in YA Literature.
Amara explores diet culture, the effects of catfishing online and family influence with our main character Saffron in real life or Sydney, Saffron’s internet persona on a dating app. Saffron is pressured by her mum who’s been a diet specialist. For years to lose weight most of teenage life. She’s been on countless diets, weight loss programmes all appease her mother but to also be desirable like her friend Poppy. When she signs up on a dating app under Sydney the perfect version of herself so she can fit in. The culture insinuates that you can only do certain things if you lose weight. Saffron feels claustrophobic of her mother’s influence and although she loves her brother and niece, Saffron decides to move out into a houseshare when she starts university. The state of her relationships online and offline has a detrimental effect on her confidence and being able to be who she is especially with flatmate Toby where she starts to find herself as who she is, the loveable, beautiful, bold Saffron that she has shaped and not society.
No one wants to be who they are and that’s why I’m such a champion for YA books like this. I feel so strongly and that’s why I LOVED, adored and screamed at this book. I see this daily as I work in an all girls school and it brings so much emotion, anger and sadness in a way as how your life, you are viewed both in person and online. It’s self-destructing and no wonder there are pressures such as this, filters that demean and reduce who you are. I follow Emily Clarkson and some of her videos are really inspiring about the toxicity of body image and the last effects it has on you and mental health. But this needs to start younger, so that young people have something like this to say, you are beautiful just as you are (yes I feel I’m impersonating Mr Darcy but it’s true). Books like Girl, Ultra-Processed that have characters like Saffron is the start of a movement that of YA Lit that are relatable and banish this toxicity from the world.
Girl, Ultra-Processed is a book that is written from personal experience which I find so much more emotional, real and powerful. Amara’s writing is authentic, raw and hits you right in the heart every time. You feel seen and heard. This book makes you feel so much. So many emotions. Please pick up Amara’s books whether for yourself, your secondary school library or a teen/young adult in your life because these books are everything and need to be read.
Thank you to Faber Children’s for sending me a copy in exchange for a review.
Leave a Reply