The Boyfriend List came into our lives in a rather roundabout way, as most hidden gems do. My roommate discovered it over winter break. Abandoned on the floor of a nine-year-old girl’s closet, it had been tossed aside by her thirteen-year-old sister. If Sarah hadn’t been in a cleaning mood that day, Ruby Oliver and her list of boyfriends never would have changed our lives.

The book follows 15-year-old Ruby through her sophomore year at Tate Preparatory School in Seattle. Ruby isn’t like the other students of the “Tate universe.”

“I have a riff on my family,” Ruby says. “I spin into it whenever anybody asks me, because my parents are different than most of the people at Tate Prep … Tate is for rich kids mainly. Kids whose parents buy them BMWs when they turn sixteen. The dads are plastic surgeons and lawyers and heads of department store chains and big companies. Or they work for Microsoft. The moms are lawyers too—or they do volunteer work and have great hair. Everyone lives in big houses with views and decks and hot tubs (Seattle people love hot tubs), and they take European vacations. My folks are madmen by comparison.”

This novel is perfectly set-up to be the epitome of angst-y teenage pop fiction. But it isn’t. Against the Meg Cabot-Ann Brashares-Sarah Dessen grain, Ruby isn’t an outsider because of her differences. In fact, she considers herself “slightly popular.” She has friends. She goes out on weekends. She attends school dances. And, she has gotten enough attention from men in order to put 15 of them on her “boyfriend list.”

But just because Ruby isn’t the stereotypical young-adult-fiction heroine doesn’t mean that her life is without its share of teenage difficulties. After suffering a series of panic attacks, Ruby’s overbearing parents—in one of the novel’s most empathy-evoking scenes—decide she needs to see a therapist.

It is after her first session with Dr. Z. that Ruby makes her list of boyfriends—her first mental health assignment.

Ruby’s list isn’t what it seems.

“Before anyone reading this thinks to call me a slut—or just imagines that I’m incredibly popular—let me point out that the list includes every single boy I have ever had the slightest little any-kind-of-anything with. Boys I never kissed are on this list. Boys I never even talked to are on this list.”

The following fifteen chapters focus on each of the boys from her list. Interspersed with stories about summer camp crushes and unwanted suitors, Ruby reveals to the reader the source of all her anxiety and panic.

She breaks up with her boyfriend, loses the rest of her friends for doing a forbidden act with said ex-boyfriend and, amongst other things, fails a math test, gets caught drinking her first beer, loses a lacrosse game and becomes a leper—an outcast in the “Tate universe.”

This is not a spoiler. Ruby reveals early in the book why she has “had a bad week,” in her words. The point of the book is not to chronicle the trials and tribulations of high school, but rather to explore the inner-workings of the female mind.

While the twists and turns of the plot can seem concocted at times, the characters and the relationships between them are highly realistic. The author uses the semi-unrealistic situations to emphasize the realism of the individuals. The reader believes what happens because in a similarly outlandish situation,
he or she would do the same.

As Ruby tells us her story, we begin to understand how each boy whom she has come into contact with has impacted her greatly and shaped the young woman she has become. Ruby may only be fifteen, but women of all ages can relate to her.

Perhaps the best part of this novel is its therapeutic value. Ruby eloquently explains the things that women think but can’t put into words. When Ruby talks about her first kiss, the reader will no doubt be reminded of his or her first kiss. When she relates the anguish of not receiving a gift from her boyfriend on Valentine’s Day, the reader feels her pain. And when she considers simply becoming friends-with benefits with a jock at school, the reader understands her logic.

Ruby just wants to be loved and valued, and the reader just wants to value and love her.

Reading this short, 220-page, novel is the equivalent of telling a therapist your every insecurity, every worry and every fear about relationships, and receiving constructive feedback. The reader’s choice, like Ruby’s, is whether to take it or not. The Boyfriend List, by E. Lockhart, is available in hardcover from Random House Inc.