Book Review: "Anatomy of a Misfit" by Andrea Portes

Synopsis:

This emotional, hilarious, devastating, and ultimately triumphant YA debut, based on actual events, recounts one girl’s rejection of her high school’s hierarchy—and her discovery of her true self in the face of tragedy.

Fall’s buzzed-about, in-house favorite.

Outside, Anika Dragomir is all lip gloss and blond hair—the third most popular girl in school. Inside, she’s a freak: a mix of dark thoughts, diabolical plots, and, if local chatter is to be believed, vampire DNA (after all, her father is Romanian). But she keeps it under wraps to maintain her social position. One step out of line and Becky Vilhauer, first most popular girl in school, will make her life hell. So when former loner Logan McDonough shows up one September hotter, smarter, and more mysterious than ever, Anika knows she can’t get involved. It would be insane to throw away her social safety for a nerd. So what if that nerd is now a black-leather-jacket-wearing dreamboat, and his loner status is clearly the result of his troubled home life? Who cares if the right girl could help him with all that, maybe even save him from it? Who needs him when Jared Kline, the bad boy every girl dreams of, is asking her on dates? Who? 

(taken from goodreads)

Review:

Anatomy of a Misfit follows Anika Dragomir. She is the third most popular girl in her school, yet considers herself a freak, hence misfit inside. She always finds herself having dark and crazy thoughts. We get to read about her every day life and all  things that happen in it. Like her job, her school life,her frenemies, but most importantly her relationship with boys.

To be completely honest with you this book was not exactly what I expected. However, I ended up really enjoying it. The book is told from the main character's point of view and I really liked that. Her voice was very much to my liking. It was witty and sarcastic. Both of which are things that I personally find make a book very simpatico and amusing. Also, I found her to be pretty realistic as far as the misfit part goes. In addition to that, there was a bit of a more mature language that, again, I personally like.

I also admire how this book, while being funny and entertaining, manages to deal with a few serious topics like racism and "slut-shaming". It also presents and dismantles certain stereotypes quite well and I really appreciated that aspect of it. As for the characters, they were very well-written and the relationship dynamics between them were quite on point. Another thing I want to mention was the family relationships in this book. The parents were involved in the main character's life and regardless of having their flaws, they tried really hard at good parenting.

With all that mentioned, I shall now get into the things that didn't really appeal to me. The first thing is the romance aspect in this book. There are two love interests and even though they were well-written and quite nice as character's, they just didn't seem to click as romantic interests in my head. They just didn't feel exactly right. The other slight issue I had was the writing style. I found it to be a bit hard to get into and to remain engrossed into the story at times, although this was fairly minimal. Nonetheless, I really liked the book. It was highly entertaining and would recommend it to anyone looking for a quick read that isn't too heavy-hearted.

Rating:

3.5/ 5

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