Smart Boys and Fast Girls by Stephie Davis (vacation read)

ON YOUR MARK. Natalie Page is overlooked and unappreciated. Yeah, sure, she can run fast. Yeah, sure, all the boys love her...as a buddy. Yeah, she has plans every weekend night...with her friends and their boyfriends. GET SET. It's time for the world to sit up and take notice. When Natalie makes the varsity cross country team, it seems like the fast track to being cool. The popular girls notice her, the hunky captain of the boys team is giving her rides home. Natalie Page is off and running. Then she starts to fail geometry. She has to get a tutor: a very annoying boy who thinks sports is for idiots. A very smart boy who thinks she's stupid. A very cute boy who already has a girlfriend and has no interest in her. A boy she told her parents she was dating. GO! Natalie Page can run. Now she has to decide how to finish.
(summary courtesy of Amazon)


The more books I read, the more predictable they become. I guess that's to be expected because as I go, I'm absorbing more plots, characters, and author ideas so I'm able to compare and predict more and more. And for the most part, this book was very predictable. I think it was a lot like She's So Money except with the genders reversed; what with the tutoring, the unreachable jock, the falling for each other in the end. It was all so cliched and unexciting. I knew what was going to happen through out the whole book and something like that is not enjoyable to read in the least...except it was. Weirdly, as unexciting as the story was, I wasn't completely lulled or put off. There was some little thing in there that made me not want to put the book down. I think it may have been how relatable Natalie was as a main character. Her character was one of the main things the author got right. Natalie is that perfect girl who you feel could be your best friend. She was written so that she would have issues and flaws and yet still seem like someone who deserved a happy ending, and for me, that was the one part that redeemed the book. The plot was ordinary, the side characters were ordinary, the ending was completely and utterly ordinary; but the one unordinary thing in the book, Natalie, was the one thing that made it worth reading. And I would recommend this book, just so you can meet a super cool girl that you may possibly want to make your new best friend.