Anatomy of a Misfit by Andrea Portes

Anatomy of a Misfit by Andrea Portes
Published: Harper Children's, September 2nd, 2014
Pages: 336
Source: Hardcover, purchased
Genre: Contemporary
Rating: 1.5/5

How I Felt: I picked up this book because I loved the cover and I was intrigued by the synopsis, but while I was able to speed through this book in a day, I didn't really enjoy it. I didn't like the writing style at all, I found it annoying and cliché; it's written as if the protagonist is speaking directly to the reader and I didn't really like that. Also, I don't know if it was just my copy or something but there were so many grammatical errors and after a while it really started to get on my nerves.

There was a lot of humor in this book and at most times it felt very forced. There was only one scene that I found genuinely funny and that was with the protagonist's phys-ed teacher just after the halfway point in the story. The whole plot and story had a very big 'Mean Girls' feel to it. There are three popular girls at this high school, and our protagonist Anika is one of them. There's the clueless one, the one everyone fears because she's the mean girl and then there's Anika. All the characters in this story had very messed up family lives. Jared, Logan and Anika, I really liked how her family problems were sort of resolved at the end, I found that so touching.

I didn't like the romance too much, I found it to be an annoying back and forth love triangle mixed with a little bit of insta-love so I didn't find that aspect enjoyable at all. But now let's discuss what I did like.

I loved Anika's relationship with her mom, it was so sweet, and just a ray of sunshine in this dark contemporary. I also liked how as the book progressed, Anika learned to be selfless and really started to help people more, like Tiffany. What she did with Tiffany almost had me in tears and I found it so heartwarming. And finally, her speech at the end was beautiful, yet very cliché. Like I said, huge Mean Girls vibes going on in this book. But I have to admit I did cry at the end. I just felt so bad for the characters, and the scene happened at just the right moment the crying couldn't be avoided.

Overall I'd say this book was okay. I can't say I highly recommend it, but if you like Eleanor and Park and Mean Girls, this is a perfect combination of the two so you'd probably really enjoy it. But to me, the combination of themes from both stories didn't work too well.

Favourite Quotes:

• “Ceaseless.
  Almost too much for this small frame.
  You make me part of the sky.”
• “But if I can keep my mind on these pages I don't have to care. I can make this all just go away. Poof. I can stay in this book and then this book gets to be real and everything else gets to be fake and who cares anyway.”

Thanks for reading!
~Birdie

***Quotes taken from Goodreads.com and Anatomy of a Misfit by Andrea Portes***
*Info on book taken from Goodreads.com*
*Images taken from Google.ca