This review was originally published on my other blog in 2007.
The idea of this story is that the main character, who is graduating
from high school, really wants to go to the prom, but he is obviously
one of the geek variety of students and he has never had a girl friend,
or even a date. So his good friends, a girl and a boy (both of whom do
have steady boy/girlfriends) publish an ad announcing to the whole
school that he wants a date. They make the whole thing into a contest,
whereby he is supposed to select one lucky girl from the 24 girls on the
List.
It is a relatively appealing idea and it works
to a great extent, but it does get a bit tedious toward the end. There
are just too many girls to keep straight and sometimes it feels like
the author is working too hard to sample one kind of every girl
stereotype - one intellectual, one drama queen, one music-hippie, one
popular bimbo, one girl next door type, etc. But there are some very
authentic moments and I think that carries the book through. And, there
is a good resolution to the story. So, it isn't a classic, but it is a
decent book, both in terms of enjoyment and in terms of honesty.
One
of the reasons I was attracted to the idea of this book was that many
years ago, my parents had pulled a slightly similar stunt. When my
mother and father were first dating, my mother wasn't quite sure she
wanted so much attention so quickly from my father, so she told him she
thought they should date around a bit before getting too serious. She
specifically told my father that he had to have dates with 10 (I think)
girls before she would date him again. So he had dates with 10 girls in
10 nights and then asked her out again. That must have convinced her.
:-)
No comments:
Post a Comment