Author: Daria Snadowsky
Publisher: Ember
Genre: Contemporary/Realistic Fiction
Pages: 272 (trade paperback)
Series: Anatomy #1 (a sequel, Anatomy of a Girlfriend was released just this year.)
Summary: "Before this all happened, the closest I'd ever come to getting physical with a guy was playing the board game Operation. Okay, so maybe that sounds pathetic, but it's not like there were any guys at my high school who I cared to share more than three words with, let alone my body.
Then I met Wes, a track star senior from across town. Maybe it was his soulful blue eyes, or maybe my hormones just started raging. Either way, I was hooked. And after a while, he was too. I couldn't believe how intense my feelings became, or the fact that I was seeing—and touching—parts of the body I'd only read about in my Gray's Anatomy textbook. You could say Wes and I experienced a lot of firsts together that spring. It was scary. It was fun. It was love.
And then came the fall."
Review: For class this week, our theme is "Sex in YA Lit." Anatomy of a Boyfriend initially stumbled in its execution and the sexual content felt contrived, but by the end, Snadowski gained her footing and this read like a genuine and heartfelt exploration of first love and sexual exploration.
Our story is set in Florida, from the first-person perspective of teen girl Dominique Baylor. The novel chronicles her throes in first love as she meets and falls for track star Wesley Gershwin and the tribulations that come with their relationship as explore and experiment with sex.
Initially, I found this book to be unconvincing as far as being an authentic look at how teens think about sex. Dom's conversations with her best friend and her thoughts about sex felt like an adult trying to imitate a teen instead of actually embodying a teen mindset. Snadowski did, however, capture the feelings that come with a first serious crush very, very well: the awkward conversations and silences, the wondering and agonizing over whether the feelings are reciprocated, etc. did feel true to life and incurred reminiscing on my part of similar experiences I had as a teen.
Where the writing really shines, in my opinion, is in Snadowski's descriptions of the sexual acts Dom and Wes commit. In the article Are Romance Novels Harming Our Teens (which was also assigned reading this week), one of the criticisms leveled against Romance novels is "their potential to create unrealistic expectations in their readers which may lead to relationship problems in real life" (despite there being romance in Anatomy, it isn't a Romance novel, but this argument could still be leveled against it); I would argue that Anatomy does exactly the opposite of this. The sex scenes, while certainly explicit, were far from sexy. Snadowski says it best in her Q&A at the end of the book, where she states that she was seeking not to condone sex, but to demystify it, and I think she has accomplished this wonderfully. Part IV of the book, which heralds the end of Dom and Wes's relationship, was also very well written and captured the overcharged emotions that accompany being dumped.
Our main characters, Dom and Wes, are both realistic and would likely be relatable to many teens in how normal they are. Snadowski mentions in her Q&A that she is surprised at how many boys actually enjoy and relate to her novel because they see themselves in Wes, in that he's a normal highschool guy instead of a caricature of a hunky jock, or a supernatural creature like Edward Cullen. Dom and Wes both have interests and aspirations, they have families whom they love (Dom has her complicated relationship with her grandmother and Wes has a soft spot for his family pet) and it is these traits that make them fully realized people that teen readers can hopefully relate and sympathize with.
From a reader's advisory perspective, this novel could be a challenge. While I think that it depicts teen sex in a realistic and healthy way, it is still very explicit and this might scare away not only teen readers who may not be emotionally equipped to deal with it, but also parents. With that in mind, it would be necessary to exhibit caution when recommending this. However, if teen or parent patrons are looking for gateway literature to YA novels that deal extensively with teen sex, this is a great place to start.
Overall, while it had a shaky start, I warmed up to this novel considerably by the time I was done. The writing was largely serviceable, but sex scenes were wonderfully un-sexy and the feelings represented during the emotionally charged scenes were authentic and reminiscent of my own teen experiences.
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Snadowsky, Daria. Anatomy of a boyfriend: a novel. New York: Ember, 2008. Print.
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