Young Adult
Pages: 288
Publisher: Poppy
Release Date: September 7, 2010
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.
Okay, so this book and I did not connect... at first. It was so weird, and I'll try to explain the best I can. It starts off with this hateful snob who thinks she's better than everyone, spitting out cuss words for no reason, and acting as childish as a teen can act, thus contradicting all her supposed utter intelligence. Then she's told she's a duff, which basically means she the ugly, fat one in her posse, and she starts having delirious self-esteem issues while dealing in the worst possible way with her family's crisis. Not a book for me, right?
Here's where it gets interesting: I wanted to stop reading, I wanted to sincerely say I did not enjoy this read. But it was like a bad gossip... you can't stop yourself from wanting to hear it. You know you shouldn't, but geez, it's just such good gossip material! From a certain point on, I was glued to the book til the very last page. I know this is totally contradicting, but what can I say? Definitely a very, very guilty pleasure. I could totally relate with Bianca when she says she's ashamed of secretly watching Gossip Girl. That's how I felt reading this. Like I should hide it from my smarter self, if that makes any sense.
The book includes explicit sex, constant cussing, meaningless underage sex, parental abuse, etc. All issues that would normally draw me in, but they were taken in such a bubbly brain-dead way, that it was just annoying. And yes by annoying I mean I kept helplessly reading because I needed to know what happens and just ended up enjoying the whole thing. I'm probably not making any sense, but that's how I felt. The plot was probably the high point.
For those of you who just love a guilty pleasure, and like me, enjoy reading about friends with benefits, you might like this one.
