Review: The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart

Title: The Boyfriend List
Author: E. Lockhart
Genre: YA

Where I got it: ODLC (the library’s e-book collection)

One sentence: Fifteen year old Ruby Oliver starts visits to a shrink after she starts getting panic attacks and relays the rough past ten days in which she has become a social outcast through “the boyfriend list”.

Themes: Rumors, romance

Main character: Ruby was a likeable main character: witty, down-to-earth, and relatable. She made some mistakes during the book, but I tend to like main characters who mess up along the way.

Secondary characters: Not really memorable. There were a couple ‘aww’ moments with some of the boys: Shiv, in particular. I hated Jackson and Kim, which is probably what I was meant to feel, but I didn’t understand their motives, which made them very flat characters to me.

Writing style: Lockhart has a very readable and entertaining writing style. The only thing that I had some issues with were the footnotes. I thought it was a clever idea to relay information, but I didn’t end up reading them when they were supposed to be read. I just waited until the end of the chapter and read them all at once (which is what I assume a lot of readers do), so they lost meaning, and I didn’t want to spend a lot of time flipping back and forth to see what sentence each footnote was paired with. Would have been better if the footnotes were at the bottom of the page.

Plot: Entertaining. Not very original, but a good interpretation of high school as a teenage girl. The timeline often bounced all over, which was a little confusing but conveyed Ruby’s voice well. The main plot was constantly interrupted by spin-off about boys from the past.

Best scene: Any of Ruby’s discussions with her parents and the Hutch/dad/Ruby conversation.

Positives: Relatable and funny main character, witty and entertaining voice, realistic

Negatives: Confusing footnotes, timeline, a little slow at times.

Ending: I like that everything didn’t turn out perfect in the end. Another facet of realism; life doesn’t work that way. Still, I did want some closure.

Verdict: Cute and charming, but not necessarily memorable.

Rating: 6.4 / 10