How To Keep A Boy As A Pet by Diane Messidoro
| How To Keep A Boy As A Pet by Diane Messidoro | |
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| Category: Teens | |
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Reviewer: Robert James
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| Summary: Flat characters and a rather dull plot make this one a disappointment. | |
| Buy? No | Borrow? Maybe |
| Pages: 304 | Date: May 2012 |
| Publisher: Electric Monkey | |
| ISBN: 9781405258166 | |
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Circe Shaw is a fifteen-year-old girl who lives with Daniel Craig, Johnny Depp and Jude Law. Sounds like heaven, right? Sadly, Daniel, Johnny, and Jude are her pets, and the only actual men around are two who are interested in her mum, not her. What’s a girl to do? Circe decides to start a blog to help her reach her goal of becoming a journalist, and to find out the truth about boys.
I'm really enjoying some of the fantastic young adult contemporary books around at the moment, and had high hopes for this one. Sadly, it failed to meet them. There was a scene fairly early on in the book where Circe decides to act on some advice she’s given about how to make a guy do things for you, and practices on one of her mum’s admirers. Naturally, he jumps to the wrong conclusion and thinks she has an inappropriate crush on him. As a scene, it’s predictable, it’s cringeworthy, and it’s absolutely, side-splittingly hilarious.
Sadly, it’s light years better than the rest of a rather dull book. Circe has little to recommend her as a character, while the love interest is an obnoxious idiot. More worryingly, Circe keeps getting advice from a mysterious American who has apparently stumbled on her blog by accident. I kept waiting for Circe to suddenly think that it was a bit weird that a sophisticated older woman from the States would take any interest in the love life of a kid she didn’t know, and her failure to realise this really made me wonder about her as a character. In fairness to the author, I should mention that the ending to this subplot is obviously meant to make this seem much less creepy – but I don’t think it works particularly well; I still found it rather disturbing.
The scene I mentioned in the second paragraph shows that Messidoro has potential as an author, but this isn’t entertaining enough to merit a recommendation from me.
For contemporary teen novels I was rather more impressed by, check out Star Crossed: Aries Rising by Bonnie Hearn Hill or Welcome, Caller, This Is Chloe by Shelley Coriell.
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You can read more book reviews or buy How To Keep A Boy As A Pet by Diane Messidoro at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy How To Keep A Boy As A Pet by Diane Messidoro at Amazon.com.
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