The Boyfriend List (Readers Circle)
by E. Lockhart
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Read in September, 2007
Ruby Oliver is fifteen, and she's been having a rough ten days. She lost her boyfriend as well as her best friend, and she's become a 'leper' at school because of persistent rumors. Ruby goes to therapy to deal with the panic attacks that have begun since her social ostracism.
The book is structured around Ruby's list of 'boyfriends' that she wrote for her therapy sessions. The stories behind the list are touching and beautifully evoke the vagaries of dealing with the opposite sex, best frie...more
The book is structured around Ruby's list of 'boyfriends' that she wrote for her therapy sessions. The stories behind the list are touching and beautifully evoke the vagaries of dealing with the opposite sex, best frie...more
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Read in January, 2008
Ruby Oliver enters therapy to combat panic attacks in E. Lockhart’s The Boyfriend List. As part of her counseling sessions, Roo creates a “boyfriend list,” naming every boy she’s been involved with—whether he was officially her boyfriend or not. Each chapter discusses a different boy and what Roo’s relationship with him (or lack thereof) reveals about her character.
The young adult book is frank, including about sexuality, and likely reflects the thoughts, feelings, and ac...more
The young adult book is frank, including about sexuality, and likely reflects the thoughts, feelings, and ac...more
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Read in August, 2007
recommends it for:
me?
Before I write a detailed review, I think I should make it clear that I fell HARD for this book right from the first page. I am blindly and irregretably in love with it, and I think it's probably an irrational love, so everything I say about it should be taken with a grain of salt.
I have never fallen in love with a book before like I fell in love with this one, right from the beginning and never letting up, only growing more and more intense as time and pages went on. The book is like some...more
I have never fallen in love with a book before like I fell in love with this one, right from the beginning and never letting up, only growing more and more intense as time and pages went on. The book is like some...more
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4 comments
Reviewed by Me for TeensReadToo.com
The additional title of THE BOYFRIEND LIST is (15 guys, 11 shrink appointments, 4 ceramic frogs and me, Ruby Oliver). It's very enlightening, entertaining, and oh-so-paramount to the book. This is the life and times of nearly sixteen-year old Ruby Oliver, former girlfriend of Jackson, former best friend of Kim, former semi-popular Sophomore high-school girl. Now just a girl with panic attacks, a Xerox-copied "Boyfriend List" circulating through sc...more
The additional title of THE BOYFRIEND LIST is (15 guys, 11 shrink appointments, 4 ceramic frogs and me, Ruby Oliver). It's very enlightening, entertaining, and oh-so-paramount to the book. This is the life and times of nearly sixteen-year old Ruby Oliver, former girlfriend of Jackson, former best friend of Kim, former semi-popular Sophomore high-school girl. Now just a girl with panic attacks, a Xerox-copied "Boyfriend List" circulating through sc...more
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Read in April, 2008
I was afraid I wouldn't love this book as much the 2nd time--but it's possible I loved it more. I think this book makes my all-time top 20. If I weren't so sleepy, I could wax eloquently about all the qualities that make The Boyfriend List close to perfect; instead, I give you this excerpt, when Ruby Oliver goes on a movie date with a boy she barely knows:
"About a quarter into it, Cabbie put his arm around me and, seconds later, he dangled his right hand down over my shoulder and squeez...more
"About a quarter into it, Cabbie put his arm around me and, seconds later, he dangled his right hand down over my shoulder and squeez...more
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Read in May, 2008
Ruby is a 15 year old who has become somewhat of a leper at her high school after a series of events lands her in a therapist's couch and she starts suffering from panic attacks. Her therapist, Dr. X asks her to provide a list of boys. The boyfriend list somehow gets out at her high school, and that contributes to her friends not talking to her, and Ruby feeling more and more isolated and anxious. In the course of the novel Ruby goes through the list explaining each boy. They aren't all ex-b...more
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Read in June, 2008
At first I was dubious about this book. It was supposed to be hilarious and silly, and at the moment I needed a funny book to cheer me up. And hey, it was such an enlightening and easy read.
Ruby Oliver is a flawed character with teenage angst, selfishness and stupidity - but I find her completely normal, and I even know how it feels to be her because readers can relate to her stories. I like her quirks and inability to express what she really wants to her friends and the boys she likes, I fi...more
Ruby Oliver is a flawed character with teenage angst, selfishness and stupidity - but I find her completely normal, and I even know how it feels to be her because readers can relate to her stories. I like her quirks and inability to express what she really wants to her friends and the boys she likes, I fi...more
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Read in June, 2008
I really enjoyed this book. I read Fly on the Wall before this and decided E.Lockhart was pretty good. I think part of the reason why I liked it is because of the storyline. It's about a girl who becomes overwhelmed over all these issues during high school and develops pretty bad anxiety. She's working through all the reasons for the panic attacks. She begins with her list of boyfriends/wanna-be boyfriends, and she describes it from there. I felt a kinship with her character because I've b...more
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Read in May, 2008
It's really hard for me to find a YA novel that manages to reflect my personal memories of adolescence. Usually they're problem novels or they have families WAY too different from my own or the characters are into stuff I really don't care about. And a lot of the stuff in The Boyfriend List doesn't really have to do with my old high school life but enough of it resonates strongly enough regarding boys and boyfriends and friends that I really enjoyed this book and now consider E. Lockhart to be m...more
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Who needs an annotation with a subtitle like this: 15 guys, 11 shrink appointments, 4 ceramic frogs, and me, Ruby Oliver? This is a breakthrough book in terms of form, bringing the David Foster Wallace footnote motif into YA lit. But what works isn't what's new, but what is classic: voice. Ruby's voice in the book is the star as she retells, reveals, rants, raves, and regrets much in her short life. Like many of the books here, while the most recent boyfriend (Jackson is the current man of the h...more
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Manages to be funny and (painfully) real at the same time. While we may not all live on houseboats and have wacky parents, we have all been through the agonies of not knowing how to react when someone doesn't call when they say they will and then claiming that it's just not working out for either us or them when it seemed to be working quite well for us, etc. And while we may not all have been publicly humiliated and ostracized by most of the school, we have probably all lost a friend we thought...more
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Read in July, 2007
I've come up with a chart, to help clarify the Young Adult Diary/Letter Writer With Issues format:
on a scale ranging from hee hee to tears oh god tears, left to right:
Princess Diaries > Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants > Ruby Oliver (The Boyfriend List) > J...more
on a scale ranging from hee hee to tears oh god tears, left to right:
Princess Diaries > Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants > Ruby Oliver (The Boyfriend List) > J...more
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recommends it for:
pre-teens and teens
i loved this book, even though there wasnt really a plot. the main character, ruby, is an only child so her parents are very protective. when they find out that shes been having panic attacks, they take her to a doctor and a shrink. her shrink, doctor z, made her make a boyfriend list of all the boys she has ever thought about. they arent all actual boyfriends, some people on the list were boys that she hasnt even talked to before. its a great book because its kind of like another view of things...more
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Read in January, 2006
recommends it for:
girls
Ruby, 15, has been dumped by her boyfriend, who chose her best friend instead. Now Ruby's in therapy and is asked to write a list of all of her boyfriends (anyone she's ever kissed, had a crush on, or anything like that). So as she writes the List, we learn about these guys and how she met them, what happened, flashing back and forth between her younger years and now, as she deals with the cliques at her school too. It's a lighthearted look at boys and girls and how we go from like to love to ma...more
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Read in March, 2008
recommends it for:
mature young girls
This book reminded me of my family at times, especially the mother and father which made me laugh. Roo, a sophmore in high school, makes a list of all the boys she's been interested in up until the present. Her therapist asked her to write the list in an effort to figure out why Roo is having panic attacks. With the list Roo explores the relationships and how it is effecting her in high school. Roo shares her ups and downs and has a great sense of humor especially regarding the adults in her...more
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Read in March, 2008
I listened to this book on tape as I packed so I missed all of the footnotes and stuff. While the stuff about her boyfriends was interesting, what kept me listening was the side-plot involving Ruby's relationship with her parents. Dang, any book that, in the first or almost first chapter talks about how her mom, the Performance Artist, promised never to talk about Ruby in a piece again after, at age 12, said mother performed "Ruby's First Period," has me chuckling. That was a long s
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Read in November, 2006
I picked up this book on a whim.
The character is in therapy for something relating panic attacks to all her boyfriend problems.
The book is riddled with footnotes which confused me greatly because it was mostly references for younger generations who have not heard of certain bands or things of that nature. And the footnotes continued to the next page.
If you're interested in reading about a girl who loses her friends over boys, then this book is for you.
The character is in therapy for something relating panic attacks to all her boyfriend problems.
The book is riddled with footnotes which confused me greatly because it was mostly references for younger generations who have not heard of certain bands or things of that nature. And the footnotes continued to the next page.
If you're interested in reading about a girl who loses her friends over boys, then this book is for you.
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Ruby Oliver is not so good with boys—or maybe she’s a little too good with them. Through a series of misunderstandings (and maybe a few betrayals) Ruby lost her boyfriend and all of her friends in the course of ten days; and gotten a bit of a reputation—and become a social outcast—in the process. Her therapist has her make a list of her past boyfriends (which is not something you should leave at school) in order to trace how she got to where she is.
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Read in July, 2008
recommends it for:
teenage girls everywhere
The Boyfriend List is such a light and fun read. I even found myself attracted to the characters. E. Lockhart portrayed a 15-year-old girl better than anyone I've read so far. Although we may not all live on houseboats and have a "boyfriend" list of 15 guys, the funniest thing is that it's so painfully real. I really love this book and everything about it. Ruby Oliver is the realest teenage character I've ever read!
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Read in September, 2008
I love E. Lockhart's guy characters, they are so much funnier, smarter and generally more interesting than ones in real life. The reader for this audio book did good voices (although her boy voices all sounded the same)and was not monotonous at all. If you are having a bad day and think your life sucks and need to laugh about someone elses, pick up this book for a quick relief. Its better than therapy : )
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