Publisher: Simon Pulse
Pages: 368 pages
Genre: Contemporary
Source: Publisher
Goodreads Summary: Charlotte and Oliver have been friends forever. She knows that he, Abe, and Trip consider her to be one of the guys, and she likes it that way. She likes being the friend who keeps them all together. Likes offering a girl's perspective on their love lives. Likes being the behind-the-scenes wordsmith who writes all the lyrics for the boys' band. Char has a house full of stepsisters and a past full of backstabbing (female) ex-best friends, so for her, being friends with boys is refreshingly drama-free...until it isn't any more.Charlotte is the lone girl in her band, Sad Jackal. She writes their songs and manages them but prefers to keep a low profile and let the boys take the spot light. After being dropped by her best friend, Lish, who starts avoiding Char in order to hang out with more popular girls, Char has only the boys left and that’s okay with her. Things do start getting complicated when Trip, the band mate that she hangs out with the most, quits the band and two new boys join. Being Friends with Boys is an adorable book about how Char handles relationships with several very cool and very different boys and all the complications that go along with them.
When a new boy enters the scene and makes Char feel like, well, a total girl...and two of her other friends have a falling out that may or may not be related to one of them deciding he possibly wants to be more than friends with Char...being friends with all these boys suddenly becomes a lot more complicated.
I’m a very character driven reader and Terra Elan McVoy is awesome at writing them. I loved Char! She was a normal, likable girl without ever being boring. I loved that she got inspiration from her songs from looking at pictures of family and friends and from her life experiences. Char does have some issues with abandonment but McVoy handles even the angsty stuff so well, it was never annoying, just wonderfully done. I loved the boys as well with the exception of Oliver who I thought was pompous but I guess at least one of them had to be a jerk.
The thing that surprised me that most was Char’s healthy, supportive relationships with her father, stepmother and stepsisters. It would have been easy for McVoy to make this blended family a cause of pain and suffering in Char's life. Don’t get me wrong, Char does have drama (including some from her mom), but the author definitely went against stereotypes and does not vilify the usual suspects.
Overall, Being Friends with Boys was a cute and funny book. The romance in the book was really sweet and made me smile. I highly recommend this to anyone who loves YA contemporary novels or books about music and bands. This will also make a great summer read and is perfect for when you are reading on the beach or by the pool!
Content: Kissing, profanity, underage drinking and drug use.
My Rating: Really Good!
5 comments:
SO going to read this book, Awesome review! :D
Fara @ Tumbling In Books
Glad this is good! Tera Elan McVoy is having her release party for this book, unfortunately, on the day of my graduation. I totally would have gone. She's so cool! Maybe she'll have another signing soon :)
I've been contemplating reading this. It sounds cute and like something I would enjoy as a pool read. I like the idea of her being friends with all her band mates until some new cute guys come in. haha Then she can't resist.
This book sounds SO good! It's nice to see books where the family is involved and that the character's problems aren't all stemmed from a lack of parenting.
Great review!
Typically it takes a lot for me to read angsty reads but this one sounds really good.
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