Treasure Map of Boys by E. Lockhart
Ruby has too many boys vying for her attention and it is causing her troubles with her girl friends. If she could sort her feelings out, which is proving hard, she’d realize artistic Noel is the boy she really would like to date. Unfortunately, her splendid friend, Nora, has been crushing on Noel for forever and has specifically asked Ruby to not steal him. It doesn’t feel like Ruby can find happiness without hurting someone and the result is panic attacks in the hallways of high school.
Ruby aka Roo makes me feel sympathy for a girl who has too many boys interested in her and panics about what to do to keep her friends and what’s left of her reputation. Given that this was not so much my high school experience (I was more like Roo’s friend Nora often in a state Roo describes as “Noboyfriend”), it is impressive that Ruby’s troubles resonated with me. I love the details and humor. Even secondary characters like Roo’s parents feel real. One particularly funny bit – Roo does not like the sound of puberty and decides to use the phrase “mocha latte” which sounds much nicer instead. This leads to her realization that the sophomore boys have gotten cuter since they’ve gotten through mocha latte and makes her bemoan how much simpler life was before mocha latte. Lockhart is very funny and Ruby’s dilemmas make a great read. The ending is happy, but does not oversimplify which pleased me.
While part of a series, I think the book stands well on it’s own (I hadn’t read Ruby’s other stories before picking this up). Though once read, it makes me want to go back and read more about Ruby. 244p., 2009.
September 6th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
I loved The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks, so I was pleased to see your review of this book. Apparently there’s a sequel–I see I need to read more Lockhart! Thanks!
September 9th, 2009 at 8:06 am
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog.
Cheers! Sandra. R.
September 27th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
I’m so glad to hear that you liked this on its own. I loved The Boyfriend List (the first in the series), but haven’t gotten to the others in the series yet.
Would you think The Treasure Map of Boys is right for 8th graders? Or would you save this for a high school library? How explicit do discussions of sex get?
Thanks for a fun review!
September 28th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
There was not much talk of sex – though there was one scene where a character cursed using the f-word. I work in a public library and we kept it for our junior high collection, but it might depend on how you felt about high schoolers’ cursing which wasn’t rampant throughout, but did occur in a scene or two.