ARC Review: Any Other Girl by Rebecca Phillips

Any Other Girl
Author: Rebecca Phillips
Series: Standalone
Genre: YA, Contemporary, Romance
Release Date: January 26th 2016

Book Length: 272 pages
Publisher: Kensington

After a disastrous, reputation-destroying party at the end of junior year, Kat Henley has a new plan. When it comes to boys—especially other people’s boys:

Don’t touch.  Don’t smile.  Don’t charm.

In the past, drawing attention to herself helped distract people from what really makes Kat different—having two gay parents. But it’s also cost her friendships. Kat can’t afford to lose any more of those, especially not her cousin, Harper. They’re spending one last summer together at the lake, where they run into an intriguing newcomer named Emmett Reese. After years of trying to prove she’s just like everybody else, Kat has found someone who wants her because she’s not. A boy who could be everything she wants too—if Harper hadn’t liked him first…

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Review

Kat is a confident teenager with quite the reputation at school; she’s a natural born flirt. Her abrupt personality either intimidates or attracts boys but it’s also managed to lose her quite a few girlfriends, all accept her best friend Shay. However when Kat’s too friendly nature is directed at Shay’s new boyfriend she suddenly finds her self alone, friendless and at the center of the school’s latest gossip. Lucky for Kat she’ll be spending her summer with her dad’s at their holiday cabin along with her cousin Harper for the last and best summer yet.

In Short

           Firstly, I have mixed opinions about Kat, she was an okay protagonist but her attitude and behavior annoyed me. She was extremely obsessed with her appearance and was always thinking of ways to talk or act to impress others. However she wasn’t always this way, when she was younger she used to play soccer and overheard another parent complaining about Kat’s rough and tumble nature and that is was the result of being raised by men and having no female influence. Shortly after this Kat paid a lot of attention to way she dressed and acted, to always make sure she appeared feminine, she would also try to attract attention to herself and therefore take any unwanted attention away from her parents. While I admire Kat’s reasons for changing her attitude and trying to be ‘girly’, I still didn’t understand how this could somehow forgive her for her other transgressions. Outright flirting with your best friends boyfriend who didn’t appreciate your advances and then when you’re caught out simply state that you didn’t do anything wrong? Gah, at least own up!

In regards to the romance, I'm sure you're able to summarise what happens but I'll just say that it was sweet and the more it progressed the more I started to feel a little sorry for Kat but I wasn't able to fully invest in it. Her character growth was slow and she won me around a little in the end, but I still felt she had a lot of growing up to do and sadly I preferred the secondary characters to the main MC's. Any Other Girl was a fun, sweet and short read filled with a summer romance, controversial characters, becoming your true self, growing up and friendship and for the most part I really enjoyed it.

The Unforgivably Long

          

  The more of this book I read the more I enjoyed it and soon enough I was glued to it, I actually read this in one sitting and was fully prepared to love it but sadly the ending ruined it for me. For instance as you can tell from the synopsis, Kat and Harper are both interested in Emmett but Harper stated her feelings first therefore calling ‘dibs’ as people say. Now Harper is a very shy person so Kat decides to set up a double date to put her at ease. As a result Kat ends up taking Nate the homophobic, hotheaded douchebag, who everyone continues to dislike, rightly so. Please forgive me for this spoiler but it’s predictable from the synopsis to say that Emmett doesn’t like Harper in fact he likes Kat so for a few chapters we have Kat ‘trying’ to do the right thing and her attempt is meager at best but then she caves and starts to date Emmett while Harper is away playing soccer. WAIT, dating someone who your cousin likes isn’t exactly my problem….

It’s not until after this not-so-secret relationship between Kat and Emmett is revealed that Kat decides that Harper should actually give Nate a try because he’s actually ‘not that bad’…. Hmm was I supposed to just disregard the homophobic slurs, the disgusting name-calling and his despicable behavior when drunk? I don’t think so and frankly I’m quite shocked that someone as strongly portrayed as Kat, who supposedly wants the best for her cousin after betraying her on an emotional level would suggest this? It strikes me as a poor apology, basically ‘I’m sorry I took him and I feel bad so here’s a lesser replacement, take this, forgive me?’

Apologies for my rant, for those of you that actually read this far along can see why I decided to split my review in two parts. Kudos to those for reading!