This isn't a subtle or challenging read, but it's enjoyable nonetheless. Even so, the book is a pleasure to read - there's some great dialogue, the emotional landscape is comfortingly familiar and the whole thing is genuinely good-hearted without being saccharine. Every tiny aspect of the plot is finished with perfect neatness. Readers won't find a single surprise in the Duff. Every confession, every bit of honesty, has to be dragged from her and she really doesn't show any signs of changing.Īs with many light romances, it's all a bit heavy-handed. And yet she ends the book almost as secretively as she begins it. As much as understanding about the Duff is an important step for Bianca, learning to communicate is just as important.
She doesn't tell Wesley how she really feels. She doesn't talk to her father about his alcoholic relapse and she doesn't even tell her mother it's happened. She doesn't tell her friends what's going on at home.
Her main problem comes from hiding her problems. But of course, under the spiky exterior she's as lacking in confidence as everyone else. She's also bright and intelligent and funny. Bianca is a sarcastic, cyncial girl with a great line in verbal put-downs and a jaded view of high school life and the dating scene generally. And this, for me, is where The Duff falls down. The thing is, communication is also vital. The trick is in understanding this and it's something that comes with age, experience, and the odd emotional bruise. Not everybody can be the most beautiful in every group they become part of but we can all be the most beautiful in somebody's eyes. And that's completely normal, healthy even. Hell, we've probably all been the Duff at one time or another. As Keplinger, through Bianca, quite correctly notes, we've all felt like the Duff at one time or another. The Duff is a very relatable teen novel with some great messages about self esteem. It's pointlessly self-destructive, of course - someone as gorgeous as Wesley could never feel anything for a Duff like Bianca. As things get further and further out of control at home, Bianca finds herself in the most unlikely of place - the arms of the hated Wesley Rush. Her mother is away all the time and Bianca is afraid her father might start drinking again, after eighteen years. Things aren't going well for Bianca on the domestic front either. But when Wesley Rush, the school heartthrob, tells her she's a DUFF - a Designated Ugly Fat Friend - it really gets to Bianca. She has no desire to flirt with every male in sight.
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