What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
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How It's Done
SOLVED: Children's/YA
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SOLVED. YA, probably published in the early 2000s, a female high school senior engaged to an emotionally abusive older man. Spoilers ahead! [s]
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Yes, you’re right! Thanks so much; that was driving me nuts!
The main character is a female high school senior with conservative Christian parents and a best friend who loves to party. She reads a lot of romance novels, and has body image issues. At a party that she attends with her best friend, she meets an older man (a college teaching assistant, or maybe a young-ish professor?) They click, they chat, they date, and she eventually loses her virginity to him.
He ends up being a typical hot & cold emotionally abusive and manipulative guy. He's loving and caring one moment, and then the next he's mocking her for her immaturity and trying to prevent her from seeing her friends. Nevertheless, her parents manage to guilt her into getting engaged to him, because they had premarital sex.
The engagement causes a lot of drama and gossip at her school, because she's chubby and not conventionally beautiful and everyone thinks she must be pregnant, but she continues to go to parties with her best friend. At one of these parties, she meets a guy who is closer to her in age, is much nicer, and is totally baffled by her reasons for her engagement. They hit it off, and this makes the protagonist start to question whether she's really happy - or even content - with her much older partner.
Her BFF is quite jealous about her engagement and her fiance, and can't understand why the protagonist is suddenly so ambivalent. They fight. She learns that her fiance sought her best friend's help in picking out an engagement ring, and her best friend sold him on the idea of the ring that she would rather have instead of the sort of ring the protagonist would want. They end up getting in a car accident during this argument because her BFF is driving drunk.
The climax of the book comes when she gives her engagement ring back to her (now ex-) fiance, saying something along the lines of "I might not know what I want, but I know what I don't want." I think that's more or less the end? There's like one chapter after this, and the closing scene is her approaching the other guy outside a coffee shop (or possibly a bar).
The cover of the book, as I fuzzily recall, was dark blue or black, possibly a close up of a girl wearing jeans? The title had multiple words, and one of the words was in red.
Thanks very much for your help!