A Seattle fifteen-year-old explains some of the reasons for her recent panic attacks, including breaking up with her boyfriend, losing all her girlfriends, tensions between her performance-artist mother and her father, and more.
Initial thoughts: E. Lockhart's organization of the book was very clever. Writing a story based on a list while still keeping the story straight with a non-linear plot can't be easy. Yet she pulled it off remarkably well. In some ways, it made me think of Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison. Perhaps because at this point, feel like reading throwbacks to my early teenage years. I might not have experienced all these things but I sure well knew people who did.
Ruby was a quirky yet relatable character. I had a lot of empathy for her because of the position she was in — (legitimately) misunderstood by her friends, left to fend for herself against bullying, while trying to survive day to day in high school. All this while trying to grapple with her panic attacks.
The Boyfriend List could've had more depth though, given that that Ruby's story revolved around recounting 15 guys and other events to her psychiatrist. Despite some metafictive elements, I thought that as a reader, I wasn't pulled enough into Ruby's world.
