The Boyfriend List

Title: The Boyfriend List

Author: E. Lockhart

Series: Ruby Oliver, book 1

Genre: Young Adult

Published: 2005

Recommendation: Entertaining high-school drama narrative.

Rating: 7/10

Summary: Ruby is experiencing panic attacks after her boyfriend breaks up with her and her friends shun her in school. Ruby's parents send her to a shrink, who gives Ruby an assignment to write the boyfriend list. Then Ruby's story is told through discussions of the boys on the list.

Reactions: I've read another book by E. Lockhart a while back and enjoyed it a lot. I noticed this book being reviewed on another blog and decided to pick it up. Overall, the book was just what I expected. A novel aimed at young adults with lots of relationship drama, a fun main character, and amusing writing. It's a super simple read, but not any less enjoyable for that.

While Ruby's high school experiences are nothing like my own, I found that Lockhart got the high school atmosphere just right and many of the things resonated with me. The cliques, cafeteria seating, boy drama, rumors -- all of it is part of most girls' high school experiences and it was definitely fun to follow Ruby's steps in this world.

I found Ruby to be a sympathetic character, though somewhat clueless. The story is told from 1st person narrative and the reader gets a good feel for her personality. Many of Ruby's snarky side-remarks are printed in the book as footnotes and I thought it was a pretty interesting way to organize the book.

My only issue with the footnotes was one of technical nature -- the Kindle app on my iPhone made it a very finicky business to jump between the footnote and my current place in the book. Half the time, I would end up on the previous page and the other half I would get back to where I was, but all the text would be shifted to a different position on the page. That was rather frustrating. If I buy the next book in the series, it's going to be a physical book.

All in all, this was a quick read. Nothing earth shattering, but a solid book with a good understanding of teenage psychology and a funny narrative.