Reveiw of The Duff By Kody Keplinger

It's my Birthday!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Title: The Duff: Designated Ugly Fat Friend
Author: Kody Keplinger
Pub date: September 7,2010
Number of Pages: 280

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.

 First thoughts

So I read the blurb for this was and was pulled in. I hate never heard of this term “The Duff” before so I was intrigued. Also it didn’t hurt that I got the hardcover copy on amazon for $6 during their holiday promotions (I love the holidays).

My thoughts

The Duff is about a girl names Bianca that has a pretty ok life. She lives in a good neighborhood, has two best friends that she is extremely close to, and is a straight “A” student, but all of that is just what you can see on the outside. When you look deeper you see that she has a mom that is never home, a dad that is a recovering alcoholic, and friends like to drag her to a teen club every weekend and she doesn’t even dance.

As if life as a high School senior wasn’t hard enough, here comes Wesley Rush; the insanely hot, school player, that sleeps with anything with legs. With him he brings this new term: the duff”: The Designated, ugly, fat friend. That is what he calls her and that is what she starts seeing herself as.

The Characters

Bianca: Is the typical school character. She has crushes, she’s smart, her home life is not good, and she is living in a state of confusion.  I loved her because she was so real. I may not have liked how she took to forgetting about her problems but at the end she realized that she couldn’t run. Author Kody Keplinger did a great job of developing Bianca as a character.

Wesley: Resident school heartthrob and has every girl eating out of the palm of his hand. He was such an A-hole, but he was the kind of A-hole that you end up loving. Plus he wasn’t trying to be something he wasn’t. He was a jerk and a man whore but at least he told everyone up front what he was.

Jessica: Is that friend I feel everyone needs. The girl that’s in her own world and beats to her own drum, she’s kind of like Luna Lovegood. Nothing you say can bring her down because she’s too busy being overly happy

Casey: Is the Best friend that has been there through everything. She knows your weaknesses and when you’re lying. She tries to make your days better and she always has an ear to listen.

I really enjoyed this book and found parts of it really relatable. The characters had real problems. This book addressed, high school heart breaks, sex, love, divorce, alcoholism, and the list goes on. It showed strong relationships, whether it was between brother and sister, or between friends!!!

 But on the other hand I couldn’t relate because I can’t imagine (sheltered person here) kids, partying and just sleeping with everyone like it’s a game.  

Other than that I really enjoyed this book. It was a fantastic debut for the author and I will be reading more. I feel that it's very relatable to teens who always feel like they are not enough. This book shows that at the end of the day everyone feels that way and you have to accept yourself in order to be happy! It's definitely Not my favorite but far from the worst book!

P.S you can get a hardcover copy for $6 bucks