Saturday, December 6, 2008

The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart

Ruby Oliver is fifteen years old and has a therapist. She may be a little young, but she's had a rough ten days. Ruby broke up with her boyfriend, lost all her friends, and became a social outcast in a matter of days. This paved the way for some scary panic attacks, so now she's stuck expressing her feelings to a shrink named Doctor Z. Doctor Z asks Ruby to write a list of all the boyfriends she's had, which further causes problems when Ruby's Boyfriend List is copied and passed around to the whole student body.

This book was cute. I didn't like it very much at the beginning, but as the story progressed and we learned more about Ruby's "boyfriends", the book got better. The story was a little confusing though, because every chapter Ruby talks about a new boy on the Boyfriend List, but during the explanation, she's continuing with the real plot of the story, which is her breaking up with her boyfriend and losing all her friends, etc. So the story was all over the place, but E. Lockhart did a nice job of tying everything together so it made sense. But besides that, I felt really bad for Ruby. She's a great character but gets into all kinds of shenanigans that don't help her social status. And plus, Ruby's best friend Kim, is real piece of work. She starts going out with Ruby's ex two days after they break up and then says it's "fate" and "meant to be". So I definitely didn't like Kim. Who is also one of the only people who has a normal name in the book. There's characters named Shiv, Cricket, Gideon, Sky, Angelo and so on. Made the book interesting, I must say. There's also a sequel, The Boy Book, but I'm not sure if I'm going to read it yet.

6 out of 10.

3 comments:

nadine said...

I like the frog on the cover. Does it have anything to do with the book?

=)
TruBlu

Simply_Megan said...

Yeah kinda. Ruby's (ex) boyfriend gives her 4 ceramic frogs in her mailbox at school. It's kinda random now that I think about it.

jocelyn said...

The Boy Book is good, but you know what's even better? E. Lockhart's The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. Read it if you haven't; it's amazing!