Anatomy of a Boyfriend [Paperback]

In ANATOMY OF A BOYFRIEND, author Daria Snadowsky examines first love, sex, and relationships among two teens.

Dominique, a high school senior with dreams of becoming a doctor, meets and quickly develops a relationship with Wes, another senior who attends a different school in town. Things quickly become hot and heavy for the two inexperienced teens, until fall, when they decide to attend colleges on opposite sides of the country. Thus, their feelings for one another change, and they're forced to reevaluate their relationship.

Very similar in plot and character to Judy Blume's young adult classic FOREVER..., Snadowsky still manages to find a unique point of view in her story through Dom. The readers take an adventure with Dom as she discovers many new adult experiences, and feels what it's like to truly love for the first time.

The book provides a very frank look at sex, and can sometimes be very graphic. However, with all of the candidness, the book stands out from other young adult novels that glaze over the reality of high school relationships without really exploring them.

ANATOMY OF A BOYFRIEND is an honest gem that will provide readers with a sincere and at times painful portrayal of adolescent life.

Reviewed by: Amanda Dissinger

Wow, what a fabulous book!!! I read it in one shot. There's lots of snogging, but it's truthful and realistic and the ending is not typical but empowering. The author is a Judy Blume for the 21st century.

Another book I was all excited about going by recommendations and reading the blurb. It didn't deliver however, and there was too much I find extremely obnoxious.

- Spoilers -

The rating was more a 1.5 than a 2, but as half-notes aren't possible I didn't want to be a total spoilsport. The author earned herself the two for at least writing a tiny bit more open about sex than what I read in most YA novels so far. And at least she didn't immediately engage in moralising, though - as in other stories - once again the outcome of premarital sex is nasty. So, I am talking about the up-side of this book: the author really manages to describe a few facets of sexual encounters without red ears. That is enough for those 1.5 stars.

The rest is - obnoxious.

As so many YA novels this author doesn't fail to make a big to-do out of losing virginity, there is the majorly shining example of the prot's own mother who married the guy happily who she slept with the first time, and in a bout of really aggressive ageism we get a grandma who is bitter, turn of the (18th!) century in her mindset and vulgar. That part really miffed me majorly. I'm not 74, but the author insinuates via her protagonist that a 74 year old widow who is looking for a partner is yukky and way out of any league of acceptability. The author should grow up, and while she does so, she should read up on ageism and what she did there! That train of thought by the way threads itself through the whole book. Repeatedly the idea that older (than the protagonist) people have sex or engaged in sex is "yukk-y-fied" without the slightest counterargument. I'd really for once love to read a YA novel in which teenagers are not "grossed out by the idea their parents/grandparents like to cuddle and have sex." Really. I mean it. I'm dead serious! And before anyone maintains that this is typical of teenagers - I wasn't, most of my friends weren't either, everyone around me was quite aware of the fact that it takes sex to have children, and that adults like sex as much as teens. So there.

Anyway, the book is mostly a re-write of Judy Blume's Forever and only marginally better than that. It carries the same message - don't expect teenage love to endure, don't choose career/college depending on your HS sweetheart, you'll break up anyway. It's not even that I disagree with the basic content.

What I really resent is the subliminal message of "as you'll break up anyway you'll end up in pain and should save yourself for your one true love, the one you'll marry after college." In this book as in any other so far (except Melvin Burgess' books) loss of virginity is made to be some major devaluation of the girl involved, it's made out to be more than just a simple physical and very transient stage of - seriously - no intrinsic value at all except to a patriarchical society. It really irks that women write this nonsense, it's so Victorian!

Slut-shaming, well, that's also a staple, sometime more open, sometimes less. Snadowsky, like all the others, has it too. There's always the "non-emotional" sidekick somewhere, that girl who does it with everyone, at any time, without attaching "any value" to her sleeping around. In this book here it is the way the protagonist wonders whether she herself is a "slut-ho", which turns her best friend into a cold-hearted slut. Is that really necessary? I'd like to read one single YA novel for once, where all the teens have sex (or don't) without a baggage of artificial moralising attached.

Only a minor exasperation, but here again we have a protagonist, almost 18, who gets utterly micromanaged by her awfully intrusive parents. I cringed at the descriptions of her masturbating (or trying to do so) with her father knocking on the door repeatedly. Hello? Really, there are parents out there who know that past a certain age kids cease to "just sleep" in their rooms. There are families in which systems and layers of privacy are matter-of-factly installed and respected, by all parties. And it would serve as a good example to finally have a teenager fight for her or his privacy and decisions instead of the meek yay-sayers that colour all YA books.

All put together there were way too many exasperating instances for this book to be enjoyable. It didn't fulfill the promise of a realistic love-affair either, and the characters were not particularly likable (e.g. I have yet to meet any teenage girl who wouldn't empathise with the demise of a beloved pet of her boyfriend).

Take it out of a library, but don't buy.