Real Live Boyfriends (Ruby Oliver, #4)

by E. Lockhart

[Jo]

I have just finished this book, the fourth in the Ruby Oliver series, and I am sad. Really sad. Sad with a capital S. It's the last book in the series, and I won't get to read about Ruby anymore. I feel like someone has died. I think I might have got too emotionally involved in these books.

Real Live Boyfriends is just as brilliant as the other novels in the series, but it's also different. It's a pretty sad book. Sure, the others in the series weren't exactly bright and breezy, but this is sad in a different way. There is still Ruby's amusing outlook and witty voice, her lists and her funky words, but sad and sometimes scary things happen, and it's different. Maybe slightly better.

Why? Well, Ruby gets with Noel at last. (At last!). But then he starts being all weird for no apparent reason, and things end up not so great. And then Ruby has another boyfriend. That's not a spoiler, see the title; Real Life Boyfriends - plural. Follow this by complications, warped views of things and confusion, and well, you have Ruby Oliver's life as we expect it. But more. Better. I can't ellaborate, you'll just have to read it.

And now no more Ruby! No more Doctor Z, no more Noel, no more nutty parents, no more Meghan or Nora or anyone else. Despite the fact that these books are fairly short, so in the great scheme of things, Ruby hasn't been in my life long, there was something about her voice, her therapy sessions with Doctor Z, her story that I fell in love with, that touched me. Despite the deceptive light, comedic seeming surface, so many serious things happen in these books, and with the therapy element, they actually made me, as well as Ruby, look at things differently. And I'm devastated they're finished! This is a seriously fantastic series, and one that will be with me for a long time. I cannot recommend this series enough!

From Once Upon a Bookcase - YA book blog