The chronicle of the irrepressible Ruby Oliver continues in this fourth installment of her coming-of-age struggles. During the summer before and beginning of her senior year, Ruby makes a documentary film that explores her friends' definitions of love and popularity. She also gets in a family-rending fight with her mom over her bizarre eating habits, argues with her infinitely patient therapist Doctor Z about whether it is better to flush or confront negativity, navigates the rough waters of her grandmother's funeral and seriously questions her connection to emo boyfriend Noel, who has sunk into an inexplicable funk. While Ruby tries to get Noel to open up, her head is turned by hunky former crush Gideon. Who will end up being her real, live boyfriend? And will Ruby ever really understand the meaning of true love? While fans will enthusiastically embrace this hilarious novel, narrated in Ruby's perfectly executed teenspeak and littered with her manic lists, newcomers will easily be able to join the angst-fest without having read Ruby's earlier adventures. Like, really recommended. (Fiction. 12 & up)Read full book review >
Shunned by her friends and ignored by her ex, Ruby Oliver experiences a rough junior year as she deals with fallout from her previous adventure in The Boyfriend List (2005), when she kissed her best friend's boyfriend—a definite infraction of The Boy Book's rules. The Boy Book, written by Ruby and her four ex-friends in sunnier times, is their quirky, funny and mostly chaste observations of boys and relationship rules. Snippets from the girls' writings open and structure each chapter as Ruby strives to shake her "leper" status, but also provide a sincere account of their friendships and perceptions of sexuality. As the second Ruby Oliver installment, new readers may feel slightly off balance as they grapple with understanding and defining Ruby's character, since Lockhart doesn't dwell on details presented earlier. Yet Ruby's lack of definition rings true as her character's strength stems from her earnest search for identity through introspection, sexual experimentation, therapy and the formation and rehabbing of new and old friendships. Refreshingly honest. (Fiction. YA)Read full book review >
Ruby Oliver, the neurotic, lovable, and painfully believable heroine of two previous volumes (The Boyfriend List, 2005, and The Boy Book, 2006), returns. The relative stability gained in The Boy Book is fleeting: Ruby's crushing on Noel but can't admit it as Nora likes him, and her now-single ex, Jackson, is leaving her notes. What's a girl to do? Run the best bake sale ever (while defying expectations and tradition), experience some panic attacks and slowly but surely come closer to figuring it all out, with some mistakes and lots of help from awesome friends. Replete with wordplay, footnotes and excerpts from The Girl Book (Ruby's latest endeavor) as well as lists ("Movies in which a makeover facilitates love") and lots of laugh-out-loud moments, this is a worthy follow-up for fans. Newcomers will be better served by starting with the equally fantastic earlier entries. Ruby is smart, confused and often foolish when it comes to love; few characters ring this true. As Ruby would say: complete and utter deliciousness. (Fiction. 13 & up)Read full book review >
This tale of three small-town high-school seniors traveling through Florida gives new meaning to the saying, "You don't really know someone until you travel with them." In the case of Mel, Jesse and Vicks, they also really don't know themselves. Mel, the insecure new girl, longs to go on a road trip with devout Christian Jesse and sassy, outspoken Vicks, who act like the friends she's always wanted. Despite their differences, Jesse and Vicks are loyal to each other, but the secrets they keep threaten their friendship. What starts as a trip to Miami to see Vicks's absent boyfriend becomes a drama fest of hook-ups, break-ups, dust-ups and make-ups. All three girls have distinct voices, and the ups and downs of their relationships will be familiar to any teenage girl with friends. The uneven pacing, however, gets very slow, and most of the peripheral characters are forgettable. This book will be an easy sell due to the authors' combined popularity, but readers expecting a book on par with their previous works will be disappointed. (Fiction. YA)Read full book review >
This cerebral and offbeat comedy of manners will appeal to fans of John Green's An Abundance of Katherines (2006). Spunky boarding-school sophomore Frances "Frankie" Landau-Banks is tired of being underestimated by the men in her life, including her upperclassman boyfriend Matthew and his wittier-than-thou friends. Inspired by P.G. Wodehouse's Code of the Woosters, she infiltrates Matthew's secret and exclusive male club—The Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds—and, unbeknownst to them, begins orchestrating their elaborate pranks. She hopes the boys will be awed by her ingenuity and finally acknowledge her brains as well as her recently developed body. But Matthew & Co. are less than pleased to discover Frankie's deception, and she learns the hard way that "it's better to be alone . . . than to be with someone who can't see who you are." Lockhart has transcended the chick-lit genre with this adroit, insightful examination of the eternal adolescent push-pull between meekly fitting in and being liked or speaking out and risking disdain. A funny feminist manifesto that will delight the anti-Gossip Girl gang. (Fiction. YA)Read full book review >
A star-struck girl plunges into the crazed world of summer drama camp and tries to cope with friends, love and jealousy in this intense romp through the world of musical theater. Sayde and her best friend Demi, a gay, black, fellow musical fan, see themselves as the outré pariahs of their boring Ohio high school, but find themselves outmatched by the artsy denizens of their new environment. Rivalries rage as students vie for the best roles in the school's summer productions led by a callous but brilliant Tony-winning director. Jealousies swirl, talent shines and insecurities bloom amid the intense competition, reflected in Lockhart's zippy prose. The author deftly handles highly varied characterizations and vividly portrays the intense, sparkling and thorny aspects of the theater world. Who will win and who will lose? Anyone with the acting bug will grab this and devour it in one bite. Exhilarating. (Fiction. YA)Read full book review >
While many kids may feel ignored and invisible, Gretchen actually becomes a fly and spends her insect life in the locker room of the boys' gym. Fortunately for readers, the first section of the story introduces her so-called normal life as an art student at Manhattan High School for the Arts. Coming from a blended family that is rapidly disintegrating into separate quarters for each parent, Gretchen finds comfort in her drawings of comics, especially Spidey. She suffers from a crush on Titus, another Art Rat, and her homework assignment of Kafka's "Metamorphosis." Time spent as a fly watching boys change into and out of gym clothes gives Gretchen a perspective that no other girl has on the boys' real characters, their hairy behinds and the nitty-gritty of certain puzzles, such as Titus's self-consciousness about his gay parents. Rather than focusing on the hocus-pocus of being an insect, it's all about the new point of view. Unresolved are the issues from when two boys get beat up by a bully, but Gretchen emerges to make some changes in herself and her world as a result of her new perspective. Fine fun for fans of both Kafka and Spiderman. (Fiction. YA)Read full book review >
After being dumped by her boyfriend, rejected by her girlfriends and humiliated by her classmates, Ruby Oliver, a 15-year-old moderately popular girl turned pariah, reassesses her history and her actions. Ruby's tool for this task is her newly made compilation of "all the boyfriends, kind-of boyfriends, almost-boyfriends, rumored boyfriends and wished-he-were boyfriends" in her life. It's a clever gimmick and author Lockhart uses it as a prism through which Ruby, with help from her therapist, can view her life and herself. Slowly, Ruby and the reader begin to understand that she's not the total victim she appeared to be initially, and while she hardly deserved the cruelty that's been heaped upon her, she had a distinct hand in her fate. The issues Ruby deals with are serious, but the first-person narrative is amusing and the overall tone is light. Although the gimmick gets tedious and repetitious in spots, Lockhart shines at depicting the all-encompassing microcosm of school social life, and wisely eschews an unrealistically happy ending, instead offering hope and honest growth. (Fiction. 12-14)Read full book review >
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