This series contains some of the most readable books I’ve come across in a while. I devoured all four of them in a week (while reading some other books, too). Admittedly, they are short and I was trying to catch up on my Goodreads challenge (finally 82 books in, 0 behind at the time of writing) right before NaNo started because I don’t get much reading done in November, but still. I couldn’t put the last three down and read them in one day each. The first one took me three days because I have a job and other stuff I have to do.

The premise of the series sounds a little underwhelming—fifteen-year-old Ruby is having serious boy and friend trouble. But there’s so much more to it than that. First off, due to some real nastiness on the part of her boyfriend of six months and best friend of ten years, she loses both as well as her two other really good friends. Basically, her friend Kim steals her boyfriend. They do this highly transparent thing where he breaks up with Ruby and a few days later is going out with Kim, and everyone acts like they behaved nobly because technically he and Ruby were already broken up. Then because of some weirdness, Ruby ends up going to the dance with the ex in question and kisses him—he kisses her back but when they’re caught, claims it was all her. So then everyone thinks she’s a tramp. As a result of all this, she starts having panic attacks and ends up visiting a shrink twice a week, which results in something that only makes her situation worse. In the first book (The Boyfriend List), her shrink has her write up a list of all boys she’s had any kind of romantic or quasi-romantic contact with. She comes up with a list of fifteen but then not-very-cleverly discards an old copy of the list, which Kim finds and distributes to everyone at the school. Suddenly Ruby’s a “slut.”

You can imagine how this would be stressful. But it sets up a pretty good story. The first book is structured in an interesting way, too. Although it’s basically told in chronological order, each chapter is one of the fifteen boys on the list and focuses on explaining that past situation plus the one in current story time. In the second book (The Boy Book), she’s got one of her friends back and a new one, and a potential boyfriend, but that goes south when she has to turn him down because her friend likes him. The third book (The Treasure Map of Boys) is mostly about that same boy, but the nature of real friendship comes up, too. The final book (Real Live Boyfriends) delves more into the nature of relationships.

While the series itself has a clear arc, each book also tells a complete story. Ruby herself is hilarious. She’s quirky (I feel like that has become a sort of cliched description, but in this case it’s true) without being weird in a bad way. She’s troubled and going through some pretty horrible stuff, but it doesn’t get to her as much as it might others. The other characters are also well-drawn, all through Ruby’s eyes. The books are set in Seattle, too, which is fun because I’m nearby and sort of know some of the places they talk about. The dialogue is fantastic and Lockhart perfectly captures Ruby’s world. Lockhart’s clearly one of the most talented YA authors around right now. I can’t believe it took me so long to find her.