REVIEW: THE DUFF: DESIGNATED UGLY FAT FRIEND by Kody Keplinger ~ P.S. I love that book!

Title: The DUFF: Designated Ugly Fat Friend

Author: Kody Keplinger
Series: -
Genres: Romance, YA
Publisher: Little Brown/Poppy
Source: Audiobook
Pages: 280

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BLURB:
Seventeen-year-old Bianca Piper is cynical and loyal, and she doesn’t think she’s the prettiest of her friends by a long shot. She’s also way too smart to fall for the charms of man-slut and slimy school hottie Wesley Rush. In fact, Bianca hates him. And when he nicknames her “the Duff,” she throws her Coke in his face.

But things aren’t so great at home right now, and Bianca is desperate for a distraction. She ends up kissing Wesley. Worse, she likes it. Eager for escape, Bianca throws herself into a closeted enemies-with-benefits relationship with him.
Until it all goes horribly awry. It turns out Wesley isn’t such a bad listener, and his life is pretty screwed up, too. Suddenly Bianca realizes with absolute horror that she’s falling for the guy she thought she hated more than anyone

My fellow readers,

Words cannot describe how grateful I am to HannahCassie and Laura for giving me the privilege of being a member of their wonderful book world! I promise not let them down, and to you, dear readers, provide reviews of books that I find inspiring or/and not so much. I humbly baw down to you all and off we go with my first review. Enjoy!

This book was recommended to me by my co-worker. She had nothing but good things to say about it and she just went on and on and on about how cool and hip and fresh this book was, so I thought why not? Let us give this book a try. On a side note, there is a movie based on this book that came out last year I think.

THE WORLD: It’s your typical American high school. The world is totally like ours, but I have to say some of the references really did make me feel like I was in the 90’s or something. Anyway, yeah the world is our world, with school, boy and parent drama.

The basic plot of this book is pretty simple. One night the main character Bianca is called a D.U.F.F. – Designated Ugly Fat Friend and from that moment on nothing is ever the same in Bianca’s world. I know I rolled my eyes too…but don’t judge a book by its cover or the premises. I was pleasantly surprised.

CHARACTERS: So, we have the main character Bianca Piper. She is smart, witty, and she is the D.U.F.F. To be honest with you, I don’t know if I liked Bianca. Some of the choices she made in the book made me role my eyes a lot and on some occasions even shout out ‘Come on, no one does that’, but on the other hand she was really witty and sarcastic which I find to be amazing qualities in a character. Some of the best lines in the book are said by her and they are hilarious. The author really made her super funny. Okay I’ll come clean, Bianca curses a lot, and I liked this side of her because I curse a lot too (ups). But not like she goes around and curses at people no, she has the right thing to say at the right moment, which makes her style of speaking super funny and relatable.

So next we have Wesley – do you know that one boy in school that you had a crush on forever, and went to school every day just to see him? Yup, that’s Wesley – the sports guy, the prom King the O.M.G. I want to touch his face boy. I liked Wesley a lot, because he didn’t pretend to be someone he wasn't. He knows he’s hot and popular and he’s not trying to hide it.

We also have Bianca’s best friends Casey and Jessica and to be honest, I found the relationship strange, because Bianca and Casey seemed to be closer (just because) and usually left Jessica out of the picture. Friends don’t do that right? But again it’s high school and as the plot goes on you kind of understand why Bianca pushes Jessica away. Then we have Bianca’s parents and I have to say I did not like Bianca’s mother one bit, to me she was selfish but her father was cool and he had a really cute nickname for Bianca.

There are other characters as well like Toby, oh ups yes I almost forgot Toby. Well…he was alright, didn’t care for him much thought. He was kind of there because the plot required it. Honestly, there a number of characters in this book that were there just because the plot needed for someone to be there, but they weren't developed further at all.

LOVE: Right, love love love. Honestly, from the very first sentences I knew the way love will go in this book, nothing new or original, the only interesting thing in this book about love - sex. This book is not afraid to explore sexuality and show important physical attraction is. Although, I have to admit some of the reasons why these particular sexual encounters occur did not fly with me.

I think that when sex is used as coping mechanism it might be interesting, or when sexuality is used in more mature books, for more mature audience but not in this particular book and context. I truly believe this book might give the wrong message to young girls. But as I said, love in this book is very predictable.

PLUS: The lightness of it. This book is easy to read, funny to read and a quick read. Although it didn’t make me want to not put this book down but it also didn’t make me want to punch a wall (yeah like Looking for Alaska did).

MINUS: Very predictable plot.

OVERALL: Overall, I enjoyed it. It’s not a masterpiece or a great classic but it’s fun and it’s easy. It’s the perfect book for traveling or on commune. So grab a copy or listen to the audiobook and I’m sure you’ll like the sassy Bianca adventure.