Uses For Boys – Erica Lorraine Scheidt

Title: Uses For Boys by Erica Lorraine Scheidt
Publishing Info: January 15, 2013 by Macmillan
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // GoodreadsDate Completed: January 10, 2013 (DNF)

    Anna remembers a time before boys, when she was little and everything made sense. When she and her mom were a family, just the two of them against the world. But now her mom is gone most of the time, chasing the next marriage, bringing home the next stepfather. Anna is left on her own—until she discovers that she can make boys her family. From Desmond to Joey, Todd to Sam, Anna learns that if you give boys what they want, you can get what you need. But the price is high—the other kids make fun of her; the girls call her a slut. Anna's new friend, Toy, seems to have found a way around the loneliness, but Toy has her own secrets that even Anna can't know.
Then comes Sam. When Anna actually meets a boy who is more than just useful, whose family eats dinner together, laughs, and tells stories, the truth about love becomes clear. And she finally learns how it feels to have something to lose—and something to offer. Real, shocking, uplifting, and stunningly lyrical,  Uses for Boys  is a story of breaking down and growing up.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for approving me to read this egalley. I apologize to them that I had to mark it as DNF.

I was very iffy on this book before I started to read it. Some people liked it despite it not being what they thought, some people hated it… I was one of the latter. Maybe hate it a little strong, but my feelings were strong enough to decide not to finish.

For as far as I got (only 35 pages), I wasn’t enjoying any part of it. The chapters weren’t even quite chapters — The first several were almost more like diary entries than telling a story. Maybe that’s because of the young age of the main character, but even still, it was hard to follow and half of the characters (stepfather, stepbrothers) didn’t even have names. It wasn’t descriptive and it wasn’t engaging.

Then we get to a part where’s she’s thirteen and (maybe older by this point) but it gets weirdly sexual. I’ll put this part into spoiler hiders, but WTF I need to talk about it and this is the point where I decided to stop reading… If you want to read my spoiler and what turned me off so much, go check out my review on Goodreads (I hate writing specific details that could be seen as spoilers in my reviews).

I mean, I get that this wasn’t a happy story and I actually knew that going in, but I was just so weirded out and incredibly disappointed and felt a little bit like a pervert reading about such young sexual encounters. Usually I tell people to try it, you might like it — But this would be an actual “Do Not Read, my friends”.

Also, if it’s not a happy story… Change the cover!! SOOO misleading.

Skip it

Just no thanks. Usually I’ll say “Try it, it might be for you” and I know some people did appreciate the book… but I wouldn’t recommend it.