Analee Echeverria is the kind of girl who is trying to figure out who she is after losing her mother to cancer three years ago. She plays two different identities. In school, she is the shy and awkward teenager. At home she is the online avatar elf hunter of her favorite online game named Kiri who takes no prisoners. She would much prefer to get lost in her online world and avoid the world of high school until she gets an offer from the most popular jock in school. This offer makes Analee realize that she has an inner fierceness that is slowly waiting to come out.
Analee in Real Life was the first YA book I read with a main character who is Cuban and it made my heart so happy as a Cuban American woman. This fake dating trope has the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before feels only with a clever twist. The thing I loved about Analee, in Real Life is that it illustrates the reality of what high school is really like without sugarcoating it. Milanes perfectly depicts the journey that Analee goes through in high school and slowly finds the Kiri that is inside her all along.