Anatomy of a Misfit- REVIEW

Title: Anatomy of a Misfit

Author: Andrea Portes

Genre: YA, Contemporary, Romance

Source: Purchased physical copy

Pages: 336

My rating: 1.5/5

Anatomy of a Misfit is Mean Girls meets The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Anika’s hilariously deadpan delivery will appeal to readers for its honesty and depth. The so-sad-it’s-funny high school setting will pull readers in, but when the story’s dark foreboding gradually takes over, the devastating penultimate tragedy hits like a punch to the gut. Readers will ride the highs and lows alongside funny, flawed Anika — from laughter to tears, and everything in between.

General Opinion:

I honestly don’t know where to begin. I tried, I really tried to like this book. The cover is beautiful, the premise sounded promising but the story, oh the story, was just so horrible. The thing about Anatomy of a Misfit is that it was trying to prove a good point, which I appreciate, but the execution of it was so terrible that it caused the story to contradict all the good points the author was trying to make. Since reading it I have donated the book to my local library because I could not stand to look at it on my bookshelf. If you’re interested in why I dislike this book so much, I’ll explain it in more detail below. I’ll also be including quotes lots of quotes!

Reasons Why I Dislike the Book:

-The main character, Anika, is a horrible human. I truly did not like her character whatsoever. She was always so judgmental, rude and whiny.  Here are some wonderful quotes from our MC Anika:

“She’s my best friend even though she’s kind of a slut.” (awhhh, slut shaming your best friend, how nice)

“I get my own room. I had to share with Lizzie for a while but I just kept calling her a slut all night till she begged Mom to move her.” (awhhh, slut shaming your sister, how nice)

“This October issue is so gay. All it is back-to-school and Halloween parties. Again.” (awhh, using “gay” as a derogatory term, how nice)

Reading from her POV for the entirety of the novel was painful, to be honest. She had nothing intelligent to say and only proved to be a conceited airhead.

-The love interests. There are two of them and they are both dislikable. The first one is a total nerd who’s like sooooo not cool, but he’s kinda like cute and funny and makes Anika feel like really special. But there’s like no way she can date him, cuz like her social status would be in total jeopardy. And the other guy is a complete badboy, with like no redeeming qualities whatsoever. (ha ha, but that’s honestly how Anika narrates the novel) Here’s a quote that sums up the love:

“I’m gonna kiss you now and you’re gonna like it.” (real charmer, aren’t you?)

-ALL THE STEREOTYPES. I can’t count how many stereotypes I’ve encountered while reading this novel. The most I found were about Christians. Here are some quotes:

“Or maybe she can’t add. She is a Christian. I don’t think they believe in math.”

“Shelli’s mom is a real freak. Like, she’s a total Christian and is always talking about what would Jesus do, and the real meaning of Christmas and how to hate gay people.”

“Her mom makes her burn her hair after she gets a haircut, so no one tries to cast a spell on her.”

Really? Really??? I’m not a religious person myself, but I have quite a few friends who are Christians and this is wayyyyyyyy too unrealistic. I don’t know if the author was trying to be funny, but the stereotype is so strong that it ends up being unfunny and offensive. The novel also contains racist and homophobic comments as well.

-The ending was a case of “tragedy for the sake of tragedy” and was only presented for shock value. It didn’t add anything meaningful to the story and just ended up being another unrealistic event.

Reasons Why I Liked the Book:

-The cover

-That’s it

Overall:

As you can probably tell, I really disliked this book and would not recommend it. Instead I would point you to books such as Falling Into Place and All the Bright Places for a similar atmosphere as Anatomy of a Misfit, but a much better plot (I gave both these books a solid 3/5 stars). And if you happened to love Anatomy of a Misfit, that is wonderful and I wish I could have loved it as well. But at the end of the day we all have different opinions, and that is totally okay!

I hope you all have a lovely day and I’ll see you in my next post♥