Reviewed by Amanda Dissinger for TeensReadToo.com

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. ( )

There have been reviews for this book all over the place, well now it’s my turn! First off, I just want to express my concern that some readers have been surprised that there is sex in this book. Number one: It’s called “Anatomy of a Boyfriend,” number two: there is a naked man-doll on the cover, number three: are there still really people out there that think teens don’t have sex? Let me throw this little factoid at you, nearly half (46%) of all 15-19-year-olds in the United States have had sex at least once. If you don’t believe me check out Guttmacher.org.Now that I’ve aired that out. I only wish I would have had something like this to read when I was a teen. Thankfully I have an extraordinary mother that was there for me. The only sex talk my mother ever received growing up was that sex was a dirty, nasty, thing that you only did with the one your love. I guess she didn’t want me to grow up with that same warped view on sex. I’m not condoning or condemning teen sex, but I think that having information available and books like this are absolutely necessary.Okay seriously I’m off of my soap box now, and on to the review. It’s probably obvious that I liked this book, I enjoyed reading it. It was a great story and I’m sure that is some ways it parallels the first love that many of us have experienced. The only thing that bothered me, and I know I’m not alone in this, is there wasn’t enough “love story” for me. I didn’t see the how of why these two feel in love, or really why Dom fell in love with Wes. Had that aspect been fully represented I think that this read would have been even better.However the actual depiction of the relationship, was totally believable! The highs, the lows and everything in between. The characters had sex yes, but they did have safe sex. The sex scenes themselves, while they were graphic, never crossed the line of becoming phony or smutty. It’s authentic, maybe that’s why I liked it so much. And probably also because The Princess Bride is my all time favorite movie. ( )

Rating: C

I bought this book at the 1/2 Price bookstore because on the day after Thanksgiving I got a $5 coupon and it was the only thing in the store that I could find (while fighting with the other 1 million people who were in the store) that seemed to be any good in the YA section. [I've been doing the YA reading thing to work more on getting the "voice" of teenagers for my writing so it doesn't come across as a 30-year-old talking like a teenager.] Anyway, the idea of this book was cute, but the anatomy thing got to be a little old in my opinion--she kept describing things in graphic detail (I did this, I touched that, it moved like this, it looked like that) and it lost some of the emotion that a lot of good YA romances have because of the technical nature of the book. ( )

Merideth says: Dominique is a slightly geeky red-head with a math teacher mom and a police chief dad. Finishing up her senior year of high school, and planning to become a doctor, she is unprepared for the depth of her feelings for Wes, a friend of a friend she literally bums into at a track meet. The two start a relationship slowly, through IM's and e-mails. As both are inexperienced, both have a difficult time initiating a relationship, much to the dismay of Dom's best friend Amy, who "hooks up" frequently and with abandon. However, once Dom and Wes get over their initial shyness, the two get physical quickly, enthusiastically and clumsily exploring each others bodies, culminating in sex on prom night. After a fairly ecstatic fall, the two go to different colleges, their relationship changes and Wes breaks up with Dom over I.M.

This book, for being so graphic, is really, really dull. The agonizingly slow build between Wes and Dom jumps straight into intensely physical descriptions of their relationship. Dom, other than being a redhead who likes science, has no personality traits other than "wanting to be with Wes/Missing Wes". Wes has even less zip than that. I gave this book 130 pages, waiting for it to get better, then gave up. The kicky cover illustration and frank sexuality on display here will get this book an audience, but I don't recommend it. (cross-posted from MeriJenBen) ( )

You will read many reviews warning you that Anatomy Of A Boyfriend is sexually explicit. They’ll mention masturbation and oral sex as well as doing it. But, Anatomy Of A Boyfriend is really just the story of a smart teenage girl who gets completely, blindly, struck dumb by love.

Dominique dreams of going to med school, reads Gray’s Anatomy the way most teens read Stephen King and doesn’t seem the sort of girl who would lose her virginity on prom night. That’s just too corny for a girl like Dom. But a guy named Wesley fits the bill of knight in shining armor all too well and soon Dom is living and breathing for Wes’s every wish. I enjoyed the portrayal of Dom as smart girl who gets suckered into the romantic stereotype all too easily and I suspect teen girls will recognize their own voice in hers.

Anatomy Of A Boyfriend’s graphic depiction of the fumbling we all experience while wading into the pool of our sexuality is dead on. It’s uncomfortable to remember and even more uncomfortable to discuss with our child. Most of us would like to just push it out of our mind, but if we look back toward our own firsts, remember our sexually bumbling selves, we know that it’s a universal experience and just another part of our child’s growing into adulthood. Even though the sexual can be wicked at times, what Anatomy Of A Boyfriend does best is expose the perplexity of love, its joys as well as its pains, in a genuine voice that many young girls, on the cusp of womanhood, can relate to.

Recommended for high school students and up.

Review first published on Reading Rumpus
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