Emily Abbott has always been considered the Girl Most Likely to Be Nice -- but lately being nice hasn't done her any good. Her parents have decided to move the family from Chicago back to their hometown of Boston in the middle of Emily's senior year. Only Emily's first real boyfriend, Sean, is in Chicago, and so is her shot at class valedictorian and early admission to the Ivy League. What's a nice girl to do? Then Sean dumps Emily on moving day and her father announces he's staying behind in Chicago "to tie up loose ends," and Emily decides that what a nice girl needs to do is to stop being nice. She reconnects with her best friends in Boston, Josie and Lucy, only to discover that they too have been on the receiving end of some glaring Guy Don'ts. So when the girls have to come up with something to put in the senior class time capsule, they know exactly what to do. They'll create a not-so-nice reference guide for future generations of guys -- an instruction book that teaches them the right way to treat girls. But when her friends draft Emily to test out their tips on Luke Preston -- the hottest, most popular guy in school, who just broke up with Josie by email -- Emily soon finds that Luke is the trickiest of test subjects . . . and that even a nice girl like Emily has a few things to learn about love.(summary from back of book)
Why oh why do books that have so much potential of being good summer fluff reads have to turn out so badly? The Book of Luke started out okay, but everything just went downhill from there. The whole guide to guys thing was cheesy and the using Luke as a test subject was cliched and predictable. I could guess every twist in the story and towards the end, everything smoothed out quickly and without any bumps or problems which was completely expected and unrealistic. If one of my friends betrayed me like Emily did to her friends, I wouldn't be as quick to forgive and forget as Josie and Lucy were. They just seemed all too ready to forget the bajillions of things Emily had done wrong and let her off scott free. I think the one good part about the book was Luke. He was the one character who seemed real and actually likeable to me. He was the perfect guy character with flaws and annoying habits included, although based on the way he fell for Emily, I can't believe the horrible backstory that the author gave him. I wish there had been more thought and planning and details put into the book. It felt like the author just took a typical YA story, added some different characters and called it a book. And that is just not enough to cut it for me. I wanted some originality and unexpected twists but nothing like that was present and I was bored and unsatisfied. This book is not highly recommended.
