The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart is the first novel in the series that follows a high schooler named Ruby Oliver. In the time span of just a few weeks Ruby's entire life has been turned upside down! Best friends have become enemies, boyfriends become exes, the boy next door she barely ever spoke becomes...just maybe, a little bit more, and she is finally starting to see the truth within her parents relationship. Needles to say, as hard as Ruby tries to process all of these changes, her body isn't keeping up causing her to suffer from multiple panic attacks. Our story picks up as Ruby is starting to see a therapist to help her with her anxiety and stress.
I, for one, appreciated the way Ruby's panic attacks were dealt with. The way she described her panic attacks was realistic enough for me, but also the events that caused them and the moments in which they happened felt very natural and genuine. And to be honest, Ruby's friends were all such whiny crazy teenage bi*#hes that just listening to this audio book was about to cause me to have anxiety attacks!
Ruby grew up with this close group of girlfriends, but when the story begins we learn that all of them have turned their backs on Ruby. This is the part where writing this review is a little tricky! I don't want to give away exactly what happened, it all gets explained in due time, so all I really want to say is...all of those girls were crazy! Ruby did nothing wrong! Kim was a freaking floozy! And Jackson was a dirtbag!!!
Okay, now I am going to move on to the things I can talk about freely...
Two of the tools that Lockhart uses in this book are lists and definitions. Ruby makes a few lists in the book, along with the obvious boyfriend list, and at first they felt a little random and strange (part of that may have been because it was the audio version and having lists read to you is always kind of strange) but then when I got to a part of the book where I noticed a lack of lists, I missed them!
Now with the definitions, that was another story! At first it seemed like Lockhart was mostly defining words, which was fine, but sometimes she would define really obvious words and so that kind of made it feel like she was talking down to her reader in assuming that the readers wouldn't know certain words. In the second half of the book the definitions were more for cultural references or fads, and that bothered me only because it made me feel old! I mean when I'm reading a book where the main character has to define movies like "Nightmare on Elm Street" or songs like "Dream On" by Aerosmith...yeah well that is going to make me feel old real fast!!!
In all I thought the writing was great. I really liked Ruby and I hope that she becomes better friends with Megan and Nora. Those girls were nice. As far as a love interest, I'm undecided. I can see the story going a bunch of different ways. I would say that I am interested in a lot of the characters enough to look up some spoilers online, but I just don't think I can sit through reading the entire series. Those 240 pages were way to close to the actual high school experience for me!
I would give The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart an abduction rating of...
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3 comments:
I remember really liking this book (but not as much as the Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks). I totally want to go reread it again! I remember being kind of stressed out on Ruby's behalf.
Hmm, still not sure if this book would be a good fit for me. I like the lists and definitions (although yeah, those definitions would make me feel old, too!), but the panic attacks make me worried. I can't really handle seeing them in movies, so I don't know if I'd like to read about them in books. Although I do appreciate when they are done correctly, and aren't just someone stressed out, saying that they're having a panic attack. I may have to put this one off for a while...
Great review, though! ;)
I don't know that I'll get to this book, but your review at least makes me want to read it (something the title and cover wouldn't have done). I might have to pick it up in a library sometime though!
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