Rating 4/5
Read for The YA Challenge

E Lockhart is fast becoming one of my favourite authors. Her books are funny, insightful and full of great characters.

In The Boyfriend List Ruby (Roo) loses all her friends and becomes a leaper at her school after an unfortunate kissing incident at the spring fling. With the help of her therapist Doctor Z, Ruby works through The Boyfriend List – a list of all the boys she has ever kissed or thought about kissing. The book flashes back to different episodes in Ruby’s life and shows how they effected her and lead to her social downfall.

Ruby is a very engaging character, she has a strong voice and is easy to sympathise with. I liked the footnotes at the bottom of the pages too, I didn’t find they distracted me from the story and they were very funny.

The Boy Book fast forwards to Ruby’s junior year, where she is still a leaper with blue spots but is slowly rebuilding her life and making new friends.

Other characters were more visible and well rounded this time and we see the problems Ruby’s friends are facing too. I really liked Noel, I always love characters who are slightly outside the norm.

The book also contains snippets form “The Boy Book”. Which Ruby and her friends wrote when they were younger to try and figure out why boys are like they are. As well as being very funny there are some very true observations.

I liked how these books were about friendship, finding yourself, taking charge of your life and being responsible for your actions. Rather than falling dramatically in love, which seems to be a theme in quite a lot of YA books or at least the ones I have read.