Fat: A Love Story ¦ Love is the Crooked Thing ¦ Beautiful Losers

Rita Formica is fat and convinced she is unattractive to men. When she loses weight for a man, he disappears and she begins to binge again. Arnold Bromberg is different - he recognises her for the person she really is and when she is valued she values herself. Just as Rita realises that she's found in Arnold what she's been looking for all along, he declares himself unworthy and disappears to live in Zurich. Rita earns the money to follows her and they live together, then, after a short, troubled separation, eventually marry.

This trilogy is not important for the events contained in it, but the things which Rita and Arnold learn about themselves, each other - overwhelmingly the realisation that love means not just being committed to another person but also being committed to yourself.

Here is no weighty inner debate, no dull introspection but a lively catalogue of one person's growing awareness of herself and a valuable observation window for teenage girls on many familiar emotional problems which often appear insoluble. The reader is treated as an adult throughout and Wersba's confident style is entertaining and engaging - 3rd years upwards will find much truth and comfort here.