A girl is sprinting towards the port-a-potties at a high school football game when she slips and face plants into the mud. Covered in dirt, she looks up to see a tall, slender blond boy with amazing eyes reach out his hand. With the sun shining behind him, he looks like her knight in shining armor, and she starts to feel something she has never felt before—attraction.

The girl is Dominique; the boy is Wes. This is how they meet. Before this Dominique thought of all boys as immature pigs, but she soon finds herself in love with one.

Daria Snadowsky’s “Anatomy of a Boyfriend” is the quintessential “chick lit” novel. Aimed at young teenage girls, this genre is all about dreamy boys and the fantastic first kisses that come with them.

Typically told from the perspective of a young innocent girl experiencing all things boy for the first time, chick lit describes in detail the emotions of young girls as they sexually mature.

“Anatomy of a Boyfriend” attempts to do just that, but misses slightly. The book is Snadowsky’s first novel—and noticeably so.

The plot is basic: Girl falls in love with Boy and they experience a number of firsts together, including the “big ‘un’”—sex. And, surprisingly, the “big night” is after prom (does it get anymore clichéd?).

Eventually they go off to college and they each experience another first: a breakup.

Dominique goes through all the emotional ups and downs that come with the territory, especially in the beginning of the book as she pines over her dream boy.

While Snadowsky didn’t base the character on herself, she did say that she used her own experiences with relationships to accurately describe Dominique’s emotional journey.

The character doubts herself, decides she likes Wes, has awkward first encounters, and starts dating him after a lengthy courtship.

From there Snadowsky dives right into the sexuality. On their first date they end up getting a warning from a cop for fogging up the windows of Wes’s Ford Explorer.

After about the halfway point, the sex starts to take up more of the pages than anything else. It feels as though the author couldn’t wait to write the sex scenes. But everything is in clinical terms, as if a biology teacher decided to write an erotic novel. The dialogue and non-sexual interactions are unconvincing and unrealistic at times, as well.

Snadowsky said she was attempting to emulate a Judy Blume book she read as a teen. “[‘Forever’] was very graphic for its time,” Snadowsky said. She said the book, written in 1975, had a huge impact on her because it openly discussed teen sexuality.

“[‘Forever’] made what I thought was taboo more open,” said Snadowsky, “I wanted ‘Anatomy of a Boyfriend’ to do that same thing for teens today.”

What Snadowsky doesn’t realize is that sexually graphic teen novels are no longer rare.

Snadowsky said she tried to move away from other “chick lit” books by including the breakup at the end.

“I remember my first semester in college. Tons of people in my dorm had boyfriends back home or at a different school.” she said. “But by spring break, they had all broken up.”

By including the inevitable breakup, Snadowsky felt she was making it more realistic; once again she seems unaware that there are also plenty of books that deal with teen heartbreak and losing a high school sweetheart.

Snadowsky also said that her book was intended for girls in their mid-teens to early twenties. But I’m pretty sure a college student would have a more sophisticated taste in literature (at least I hope so).

Overall, “Anatomy of a Boyfriend” is a quick, and mildly entertaining read, but there’s nothing really special about it. Better sexually graphic teen novels are everywhere today (AP English III students even read them some years) and, despite what she may think, there is nothing that really separates Snadowsky’s from the pack.