He's also the Republic's most wanted criminal, prone to stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Day, on the other hand, is an anonymous street rat, a slum child who failed his own Trial.

She looks forward to the day when she can join up and fight the Republic’s treacherous enemies east of the Dakotas. June is rich and brilliant, the only candidate ever to get a perfect score in the Trials, and is destined for a glowing career in the military. 12-14)Ī gripping thriller in dystopic future Los Angeles.įifteen-year-olds June and Day live completely different lives in the glorious Republic. The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a diversion. Besides the mostly off-stage issue of a parent’s severe illness there’s not much here to challenge most readers-driving, beer-drinking, divorce, a moment of surprise at the mothers smoking medicinal pot together. In the background the two mothers renew their friendship each year, and Lauren, Belly’s mother, provides support for her friend-if not, unfortunately, for the children-in Susannah’s losing battle with breast cancer. Belly’s dawning awareness of her sexuality and that of the boys is a strong theme, as is the sense of summer as a separate and reflective time and place: Readers get glimpses of kisses on the beach, her best friend’s flirtations during one summer’s visit, a first date. Han’s leisurely paced, somewhat somber narrative revisits several beach-house summers in flashback through the eyes of now 15-year-old Isabel, known to all as Belly.īelly measures her growing self by these summers and by her lifelong relationship with the older boys, her brother and her mother’s best friend’s two sons. Although the gimmick gets tedious and repetitious in spots, Lockhart shines at depicting the all-encompassing microcosm of school social life, and wisely eschews an unrealistically happy ending, instead offering hope and honest growth. The issues Ruby deals with are serious, but the first-person narrative is amusing and the overall tone is light. Slowly, Ruby and the reader begin to understand that she’s not the total victim she appeared to be initially, and while she hardly deserved the cruelty that’s been heaped upon her, she had a distinct hand in her fate. It’s a clever gimmick and author Lockhart uses it as a prism through which Ruby, with help from her therapist, can view her life and herself. Ruby’s tool for this task is her newly made compilation of “all the boyfriends, kind-of boyfriends, almost-boyfriends, rumored boyfriends and wished-he-were boyfriends” in her life. After being dumped by her boyfriend, rejected by her girlfriends and humiliated by her classmates, Ruby Oliver, a 15-year-old moderately popular girl turned pariah, reassesses her history and her actions.

The boyfriend list by e lockhart