Another hilarious installment in the life of Ruby Oliver, this time documenting everything you could possibly need to know about boys. This includes: The Care and Ownership of Boobs, Levels of Boyfriends, Clever Comebacks to Catcalls and Why Girls are Better than Boys as well as a number of other need-to-know pieces of boy wisdom.

In case you weren't aware by now, girls are better than boys because we smell better, always carry tampons and are more likely to survive if we fall off an ocean liner. Basically, this book is non-stop fun with a few actually important life lessons and issues thrown in there as well. There's a great deal of tackling sexism in it's many forms - subtle and otherwise - and also expressing feminist values without overdoing it. Most of it I agree with and I love how the author uses humour to prove her point rather than the traditional block-my-ears-now rant about seeing girls as sexual objects. I have one issue that I can't resist to point out, it's nothing original and it's been talked about and dissected a million times over... catcalling. Or wolf-whistling. Or car horn-honking. I honestly don't think this is sexist, if I saw a hot guy walking down the road I might attempt (pitifully) to wolf-whistle (and then possibly duck behind something like a 12 year old). My point is - and feel free to disagree - people go perving on each other all the time regardless of gender. I've never saw this as an issue, just something I wanted to comment on even though I know very few people will actually care :)

On the subject of boys, as that's kinda what this book is about, I really like that E. Lockhart doesn't give us a romanticised set of unrealistic and angelic male characters. Like I found with Melina Marchetta, we get the honest version of teenage boys (and it ain't so pretty) rather than some sparkling, "love you forever and always" Edward Cullen. This is obviously what I've been missing while I was wasting my time trying to find something worthwhile in the fantasy and paranormal romance side of young adult literature. Long live realistic fiction, it seems like that's where it's at lately.