A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them For: Young Adult
Pub: 2006
193 pgs.
Rating: 4/5
Read: Aug. 28th (in one sitting)
This is really part two of The Boyfriend List, although it was set up a bit differently and I liked it a bit more. There were still footnotes, but not as many, and not as long, and they didn't seem as obnoxious.
Ruby is still a leper, practically friendless, and still seeing Dr. Z, her shrink. It's now junior year and her life is very, very different than it has been through the beginning of tenth grade. You can see how talking with a psychiatrist (at least a GOOD psychiatrist) helps you understand yourself a little better, as well as how to make the right choices for yourself.
Roo misses Kim but becomes friends with Meghan, who carpools her to school, and becomes friends-again with Nora. She still pines for Jackson, and has become buddies with Noel. She gets a part time job at a zoo, where she really seems to enjoy the animals, and is truly becoming less passive than previously. The crises point in this book comes when all the important characters in the story go together for a sort-of-nature week at "Canoe Island".
It's not a pat, girl-gets-boy ending. It's a REAL ending, an ending that shows growth and maturity and thoughfulness. It's an ending that's truthful. It ends, "I lay there in the blue light from the TV set. Not really watching. Just lying there, between Meghan and Nora..........The water lapped at the sides of our houseboat. And I felt lucky." She's going to be all right.
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