Author: E Lockhart
Publisher: Audible
Rating: WARTY!
When I first looked at this, I decided that I sincerely hoped the female depicted on the cover was the therapist because she looks way too old to be the subject of the novel. If she is the subject of the novel, Ruby Oliver, then the therapist has way more serious issues to address than a list of people who aren't even boyfriends. I can't think of a worse or a more inauthentic approach to a novel than the one taken here. Or more accurately, I probably can. but I can't imagine one which would have a chance of becoming published. I can't believe this one was.
It took only the first disk of this audio book turn my stomach. The reading by Mandy Siegfried was acceptable, but the content was not. This was the most tedious and boring of characters, completely self-obsessed, blind to reality, effectively abused by her parents (sent for medical care for one panic attack? Seriously? Way to screw-up your daughter, numb-nuts. If you'd raised her properly she wouldn't be having these attacks to begin with - and I'll bet if she'd been a boy she wouldn't have been raised that way, either! If she's having a full-blown panic attack now, then she needed help long before this.
But given how appallingly lousy her parents are, a psychiatrist, child psychologist, or some other sort of therapist might be what's called for, but if that's the case, and all she's focused on is a list of fictional boyfriends, the the medical practitioner needs to be struck off (or bumped off) for malpractice! So no matter how you come into this novel it's just wrong, wrong, wrong, and one more time, WRONG!
Supposedly her psychiatrist/therapist/whatever told her to create a list of her "boyfriends" which includes people who she never even dated - so that they can be discussed at the next session. To what end? The problem isn't boyfriends, fictitious or otherwise! It's her lack of self confidence caused by the fact that she's been raised like far too many girls: taught that she needs validation and that beauty is everything, by her lousy parents who are actually the real problem here.
It took hardly any time at all to decide that I had much better things to do with my time than to listen to a spoiled-rotten fifteen-year-old self-obsess about boyfriends she never even had, as though without a boy in her life she's completely worthless, useless, hopeless and incomplete at best. Why do female YA authors treat females so appallingly badly?
I fell in love with Frankie Landau-Banks, and I adored Sadye, but after dealing with We Were Liars and now this mess, I'mm done with E Lockhart/Emily Jenkins (now there's a case of schizophrenia waiting to be diagnosed: adopt a new persona so you can deceive readers by writing books under a false name? Whoa!). Check please! I'm outta here. Clear the pilates from the table and next time bring me a bigger cup size for my coffee. I'm done.
