The DUFF: Designated Ugly Fat Friend by Kody Keplinger

This is another book that I picked up because of the movie. Unfortunately I was a bad reader and watched the movie before I picked up the book. I am actually glad I did it this way around because of how different they are.

Both the book and the film are centred around 17 year old Bianca Piper and her struggles involved in her being labelled as the DUFF. While the film focuses on Bianca trying to solve the problems in her love life, the book is different. Bianca's love life does play a large role in the book but it also involves her issues at home and with her friends. In the book Bianca is characterised as a teenager better than in the film. The book allows her to go through more teenage issues that can be related to on a broad scale.

While reading this book I noticed a few topics that it brought up were ones that I had never really taken the time to think about.

One of the topics that this book brought up was labels. Specifically labels given to teenagers in high school. This book made me realise that everyone is given a label no matter how hard you try to run from it. Nowadays the labels given to people when they are in high school are getting more and more creative and are also getting a lot more personal. This book though helped me to realise that you don't need to let these labels define who you are. I know that this is easier said than done and sometimes it doesn't work but trust me, they don't all last forever. The only way you can stop seeing yourself as the label that others have given you is to stop seeing others as the labels they have been given.

Another topic that came up was distracting yourself from your problems. This is the topic that I related to most in the book. It made me realise just how often that I did things as a distraction from my real problem. I have allowed problems to get continually worse until I cannot avoid them anymore. This is something that Bianca goes through in the book. She continually uses Wesley to keep her mind off of the problems with her parents and her friends until she can no longer avoid the problems.

Overall I enjoyed this book. I liked how Kody Keplinger was able to make readers laugh and think at the same time. I liked her writing style and her characters and would love to pick up another of her books.