Anatomy of a Misfit by Andrea Portes
Publisher: HarperTeen (25th Sept 2014)
Amazon || Book Depository || Goodreads
Received a copy
for review from Harper 360, thank you!
Blurb:
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 from Romania. Everyone else in
Nebraska is about as American as an apple pie . . . wrapped in a flag . . . on
the Fourth of July.
Spider stew.
That's what Anika is made of. But she keeps it under wraps to maintain her
social position. One step out of line and Becky Vilhauser, first most popular
girl in school, will make her life a living 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 . . .
?
Logan. Who
needs him when Jared Kline, the bad boy every girl dreams of, is asking her on
dates?
Who?
From the back of the blurb, we can definitely tell
that Anatomy of a Misfit is a story
about the social hierarchy in high school. Many readers have claimed that it is
Mean Girls and Heathers meet The Perks of Being a Wallflower and I knew I had to read it because
anything that has a semblance to Mean
Girls is flipping awesome.
Anika Dragomir is the third most popular girl in Pound
High, she’s blonde, gorgeous and smart, falling below the “Regina George” of
Pound High, Becky Vilhauer (#1) and her best friend, Shelli Schroeder (#2). Underneath
her glossy hair and pretty clothes, Anika is not made of cupcakes and rainbows
and everything sweet. In fact, she thinks she’s made of spider stew because
she’s got a twisted mind which is filled with troubled thoughts, but no one
knows that. In the social ladder, there’s only room for the gorgeous glamazon,
not the freak that she truly is, or else she’ll be shunted for being a social
pariah.
Honest to truth, I thought the premise of the book was
genius. I loved the whole Mean Girls/Heathers feel that the book gives off
and I couldn't get enough of Andrea Portes's heroine, Anika. She’s insanely
funny, twisted and snarky. Though I did gasp at some of the things she said or
did, I still liked her. You know why? Because she’s different. She’s a breath
of fresh air. The writing was sharp, witty and at times, really rude, but that
only made it appealing.
At a flip through, Anatomy
of a Misfit might seem like a comical, tongue-in-cheek tale of surviving
high school and staying on top of the social ladder, but you couldn't be more
wrong. There’s are some underlying themes that are much darker, such as
domestic abuse, racial discrimination (though it wasn't heavily featured in the
book, but it spoke volumes), the deeply affecting rumour mill, just to name a
few.
What I loved most about the book was Anika's
transformation – from popular mean girl into someone who is proud of who she
truly is. I really enjoyed reading about Anika's relationship with Logan, which
slowly blossomed into something really sweet and beautiful. Logan is
undoubtedly a passionate and loveable character and his ways in wooing Anika –
thoughtful, adorable and really romantic – really made my heart fill with love.
A tender yet uplifting tale of self-discovery and
self-acceptance, first loves and breaking away from the status quo. I felt the
plot was well-written, with a good pace and the dialogues were funny, witty and
highly entertaining. A truly engrossing read, it was filled with dark humour
and deals with a plethora of emotions, I couldn’t stop reading Anatomy of a Misfit. It was that good.
 |
| Emma Roberts as Anika |
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