***This review can also be found on my blog Love at First Write***

I won this book in an author giveaway on Goodreads. This has not altered my opinion in any way and my review will be honest, as usual.

When I first read the blurb for this book, I thought it would be perfect for me. It seemed like exactly the kind of book I needed to read at the moment. Ok so he wasn’t my first boyfriend, but he was the first guy I actually cared about and it was the first time someone had broken up with me, so I felt like I could really relate to what Dom was going through and that reading a book getting over a breakup would help me out emotionally too.

Reading through Dom’s perspective was great, I felt like her best friend that she shared everything with. Sure, I didn’t always agree with her decisions like looking at her ex-bag or talking to her ex post-breakup but as she said, life is full of ups and downs. You can’t have happiness without sadness; you can’t have passion without pain. You will have lows, but you will also have high moments in your life as well. She might not have founds the perfect guy for her, but her heartache helped her discover what she wanted:

1) To never put a guy before her dreams
2) That each guy had his own pros (Love, Passion, and Friendship) and that all three are necessary for a relationship.

I might not have a Calvin or a Guy in my life, but I’ve had a Wes. This book put me in Dom’s world to know I don’t NEED to learn for myself. Anatomy of a Single Girl did for me what every great book should do. Teach.

On top of Dom’s awesomeness the reader also gets a great friendship between Dom and Amy. Dom realizes what boys do to their relationship now that Amy is the one ditching Dom for her boyfriend. Seeing her point of view of Amy and her relationship was another eye opener for me. You want someone to love you for who you are, but sometimes you can’t help but change. However, above all, your girls have your back. As Dom’s mom expresses at the beginning of the book, school is the time to meet all sorts of people, not the time to latch on to one person who’s “the love of your life”. Growing up is about discovering who you are and what you really want. ( )

In the interest of full disclosure, let me start this by saying that I did not read Anatomy of a Boyfriend. I don't think that this had too much of an effect on my opinion of the book, though, because no prior knowledge is really necessary.

In Anatomy of a Single Girl, Dom is still reeling from the breakup with her high school sweetheart. Now in the summer after her first year of college, she's completely sworn off guys -- that is, until she meets a really hot guy while she's volunteering at the local hospital. Guy (that's his name) turns out to be really smart, too, and he and Dom have some great conversations about science and medicine. Their relationship is the greatest when they've first met, before they let anything else get in the way of their friendship. They have a great friendship -- watching movies, trying new foods, hanging out on the beach -- until they ruin it by getting their hormones involved.

Dom decides that after her serious relationship failed, she wants to see what it's like to hook up with a guy with no strings attached, so she and Guy begin an exclusive friends-with-benefits relationship. At this point, the serious, studious Dom disappears. Dom had previously said that she wouldn't let any guy distract her from her carefully planned pre-med major, but after knowing Guy for approximately two days, she's already forgotten that promise. Dom says that she won't let anything get in the way of spending time with her parents, but there she is again, hanging out with Guy and blatantly lying to them about it. Guy makes it clear from the beginning that he's not looking for a relationship, he definitely doesn't want to get married, he doesn't want to have children, and this thing isn't going to go past the summer. Dom agrees, and then repeatedly throws tantrums when she realizes that she and Guy aren't building anything long-term.

Dom throws a lot of tantrums, and she's a very unlikable character. I found it really tedious to try to keep up with her emotions -- one minute, she's thrilled, the next she's angry, then she's okay again, then she's breaking up with Guy. Then they're back together, only to repeat the cycle again. If I were Guy, I wouldn't put up with her. I thought that he behaved really admirably for a teenage boy, being upfront with what he wanted even when he knew that it wasn't what Dom wanted to hear.

I was pretty happy with the first half of the book - it was a solid three stars. But then Dom became downright annoying and I struggled to keep reading. Luckily, the book is just over 200 pages, so I was able to finish it in a couple hours. Overall, it's not bad, just not particularly good. I'm left feeling more or less indifferent to it.

Thanks to Goodreads and the publisher for the free copy. ( )

If you are a parent needing to have a conversation with your young adults about relationships, teenage crushes and love affairs, casual sex, getting tested for disease and outfitted for birth control, this is the book you need to read together with your kids. It is graphic regarding kinds of sex, positions, emotions and playing games, but is told in a narrative that has a compelling plot line. If Mommy or Daddy cannot get the words out, this tool will help you greatly. My thanks to the author and Goodreads for a complimentary copy. ( )

There are some books in life that you know your life is better because of. This isn't one of those books. To be honest, I probably wouldn't have read this book if I hadn't checked it out at the same time as I checked out the first book in the series. I didn't like that book and I didn't like the continuation of the neurotic drama that is Dominique Baylor's sex life.

Like with the first book, everything was clinical. I know that Dom wants to be a doctor, but it almost felt like the author was trying to give the readers a sexual health lesson. It also had the tone of "we're going to explore casual sexual relationships, but if you have them, then your life may be vapid/meaningless".

Another repeating theme was the obsession with appearance. I know that Dom is 18 and that is a big emotional thing for an eighteen year old girl, so maybe it could get a bit of a pass. The big exception I have with giving it that pass is that it seemed to imply that because Dom was now at a lower weight than she was before that she was smarter and more worthy of praise than she was at the higher weight. It might give readers the idea that people who are bigger are less intelligent or less deserving of respect. It focuses on judging a person based upon their body alone and that's a very dangerous path for thoughts to take.

The characters within the book are annoying. Well, there aren't really any other characters than Dom. Sure, she's staying at her parents' apartment, she's with Guy, she talks about Cal, and she has conversations with Amy, but it feels like everything has to center on pleasing Dom. With her very neurotic personality, it's impossible to please her, so there are around 225 pages of Dom just whining. She's a horrible friend. She's extremely judgmental of anyone who doesn't bend to her ideas. She regularly disparages Amy's sex life (again) and continues on her sex-negativity even as she uses Guy as a sex toy for the Summer. She would actually judge Amy for simply talking to or flirting with a guy because (to Dom) this behavior is something that should happen between two people who are working towards getting married and having lots of babies one day. And when she realizes that this outcome isn't going to happen with Guy, what does she do? She doesn't stay away from him. She uses him to get off. He doesn't sacrifice the cutesy stuff in the relationship to have sex, she does. And when he wants to do other stuff, she's controlling and manipulative. It's really like she becomes this huge train-wreck of a character.

The writing in this book wasn't horrible, but it was worse than the first book. There was little actual insight and there was no real entertainment value. Because it wasn't a complete suckfest, I'm still going to go with two stars, but it just barely earned that second star. ( )

A wonderful coming of age story that explores first love, first heartbreak, and the first steps into adulthood. If you're young, and just coming of age, you'll relate to the events your going through in life. If you're older, it'll bring back your own youth. Overall, a great quick read that is just about sure to stir something in any female reader.

*I received this book in exchange for an honest review.* ( )