The Duff by Kody Keplinger

I'd never heard of this book until I saw a bunch of posts on IG about how it is becoming a movie. I love reading books then going to the movie premiere, so I decided to pick this one up. If you read the back cover of the book, it will literally tell you the entire plot of the story. Literally.

Ok, so let me start by saying this book was cute. It's definitely a fluff kind of read that you want when your brain feels like it can't compute anything and you need something easy and fun to read... Kind of like watching chick flicks on Lifetime. If you have ever been a teenage girl, you can more than likely relate to the main character, Bianca. If you are the cynical, sarcastic one out of your group of friends, you will most likely be able to relate to Bianca. She is a high school senior who is pretty average looking but is very smart. She has a tough outershell made of ssarcasmthat she uses to bottle up all of her feelings. She also has two gorgeous blond best friends that look like they should be on the cover of Teen People (is that even still around?). Basically, Bianca comes on some hard times in her personal life. Parents are divorcing, her long time crush has a girlfriend, her dad has a drinking problem, etc. She decides to distract herself from all of her problems by setting up a friends with benefits relationship with the school's gorgeous, rich manwhore, Wesley, who has not so affectionately nicknamed her "duffy" because she is the Duff (designated ugly fat friend) of her friend group. I mean, who wouldn't want to hook up with someone who insults you at every chance you get? Oh that crazy self esteem, who needs ya! Anyway, so they hook up a lot... A lot, a lot. But as FWB situations ALWAYS go, feelings eventually come in to play. Bianca knows Wesley will never like her because she will always be Duffy to him. On top of that, she has been basically ditching her friends for him and hiding all of the drama going on in her life from them, so they are all mad at each other. Yadda yadda yadda lots of drama later, happy ending.

I can seriously say that I can give this review without fear of spoilers because everything you could possibly want to know is on the back cover of the book. The whole thing is soooooooooo predictable that you pretty much know exactly what's going to happen as soon as you meet all the characters. The thing I disliked the most about the book was Bianca's inner monologue consisting of "He could never like me, right? Girls like me are destined to be the Monica Lewinskys of the world, not the politician's wife." It's really eyeroll worthy for the most part.

I do think it will make a cute movie because it will be very Mean Girl-ish with hotties and funny high school drama. Even though the book was mediocre at best, I'll definitely be seeing the movie in theaters. This isn't the type of book where you feel like you're going to miss something if you don't read the book first (especially since by the looks of the movie trailer, they just used the book as a very loose guideline... Actually I'm not even sure they are going to follow the book at all), so I wouldn't worry too much about it. That being said, it is an easy read and a good fluffy filler, so if you want something that doesn't require a lot of thinking and will give you a few laughs, give it a shot.

3/5 stars