The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart-Audiobook Review

Rating: 4/5 Stars

Genre: Contemporary

Release Date: 9/26/2006

About the Book: When Ruby Oliver's boyfriend breaks up with her and her friends alienate her, Ruby starts to have panic attacks which convince her parents she needs therapy. It is her therapist that comes up with the idea for the boyfriend list-not all of the names are boyfriends, some are boys Ruby talked to once, or went on a date with or are even imaginary. Through the list we find out about Ruby's story-one boy at a time.

GreenBeanTeenQueen Says: I'd always seen this book around and thought it looked cute, but hadn't ever read it. When I got an ARC of the third book in the Ruby Oliver series, A Treasure Map of Boys, I knew I had to go back and read this one. Since I had the audiobook at my library, I opted to listen to this one.

Narrator Mandy Siegfried is great-she captures Ruby perfectly and I really felt like I was a friend of Ruby's listening in on her secrets. Each chapter is a new boy on the list-we find out why the boy is on the list, a little more about Ruby and also more about Jackson, Ruby's ex-boyfriend and why the drama at school is happening. Not everything is reavealed at once, and while somtimes this bugs me in books, E. Lockhart does an excellent job of letting you in on enough information that you want to keep reading (or listening.)

Ruby really feels like a best friend-she's smart, she's funny and I wish I was as creative and witty as she was (although I'm sure Ruby would disagree that she was any of those things!) I'm really looking forward to reading more in this series and from E. Lockhart in general. I love the way she writes teens-it reallys transports me back to my own teen years and the dialogue and characters feel real.

I did notice that the narrator for The Boyfriend List has narrated lots of YA books and is doing the audiobook version of Aprilynne Pike's Wings. I think she'll be great at it and now I'm interested in finding more books Mandy Siegfried has read!

Also, this pretty much never happens, because not many people review (or like) audiobooks, but ThePageFlipper recently reviewed this same audiobook! You can check out her review here.