SOLVED. Adult Sci-Fi book about implanting minds into new bodies and a young poor woman who sells her body for an older rich woman to inhabit

[Emily]

I am looking for this sci-fi book I read sometime in the early 2000s, and I believe it was published around then too, definitely no later than 2007. I have been looking for this book since about 2007 with no luck whatsoever so I appreciate the help!

I vaguely remember the cover being minimalist blue with a naked woman's body curled like an embryo. However this was in Australia, so the cover may have been different elsewhere if published overseas. Or my memory is completely wrong.

I picked this up from the adult sci-fi section in the library, however, it may have been YA as I don't remember the book being too risque.

Plot points I remember:

The book is set on a futuristic earth where the rich live in skyscrapers above the clouds of pollution and the poor live down on the ground below the pollution.

The MC is a young woman who is poor, living on the ground working in a factory and making just enough to scrape by.

At the factory where she works there is an explosion and her friend or family member is injured and burned and they don't earn enough for treatments and likely will die.

In exchange for her friend to be healed the MC sells her young youthful body to a rich older woman who will inhabit her body and be young and strong again.

It is a sign of wealth amongst the rich to inhabit new 'human' bodies rather than get bio-enhancements to prolong their lives.

SPOILERS AHEAD:


Part of this exchange was that the MC was to be given a basic cyborg? (I say cyborg, but it may be bio-created) body to inhabit or the old woman's body in return, I can't quite remember.

Instead, the MC's consciousness wakes up in an experimental enhanced body with all the bells and whistles that has an internal AI that communicates with her. I think she also had enhanced senses and strength, and maybe the ability to choose how she looks?

As the MC now has an enhanced body that can handle space travel she now has the ability to go to space, and as such the book ends with her in space.

[Emily]

I am going to answer my own question here as someone on another site just managed answer and give me the name of this book. I am so happy, this book has plagued me for so long I was starting to think I had made it up.

The book in question is called Spare Parts by Sally Rogers-Davidson published in Australia in 1999.