Confessions of a Boyfriend Stealer: A Blog Book

2.5 stars. Genesis is one of the three "Terribles", the plain friend of two popular and self-absorbed friends who've dubbed themselves with this nickname. While her friends are out of town during school break, Genesis - who's always been a friendly shoulder to cry on for their boyfriends - hangs out with their boyfriends and ends up kissing one of them. Scared of what it's going to do to her friendship with the other Terribles, yet excited that life is actually happening for her instead of just around her, Genesis blogs about what really happened before her friends can tell their side of the story.

The entire book was written in blog entries by Genesis, followed with comments from "readers" of the blog. The format seemed more of a gimmick than anything else, since the comments at the end of each entry/chapter were basically from three anonymous readers, giving their opinions on whether Genesis is to blame for whatever she wrote about. The comments didn't add anything and didn't seem particularly realistic either; if her blog was as popular as she made it seem, she should have been getting more comments, from more readers, as the blog went on. But it stayed with just the three commenters, who failed to offer up anything important or interesting. I found myself skimming the comments and eventually skipping them altogether.

I liked Genesis's voice. She sounded fairly authentic and relatable, and although the plot of this book was on the weak side, it was understandable why this could seem like such a huge, monumental event in her life, since she also sounded so young. I'm a little unsure about the target audience of this book, since it felt so young, yet some of the stuff included wouldn't be completely age appropriate for younger readers. Perhaps that's the main problem of this book - it felt really light and frothy, but it also tried to be more mature than actual readers would appreciate, satisfying no one.

The characters in here weren't particularly well-developed, but it wasn't the sort of book where one would expect as much. Instead, all the characters fit neatly into molds: the bitchy friends, the lovestruck boyfriends, the cheating boyfriends/girlfriends, the immature mom and sister... I was fine accepting each character as having a stock personality, but at the same time, none of the stories seemed to really go anywhere. The main plot of Genesis being conflicted about the guys and her friends wrapped up but in a way that made you wonder why it was worth writing an entire book about (although, to be fair, this sort of conflict is exactly the sort of thing so many people angst over in high school!). There was also a subplot about Genesis wanting to be a filmmaker, which seemed to be kind of blown out of proportion (everyone loves her work and thinks her new documentary might make it onto MTV!); then again, for the target audience, why not include a bit of wish fulfillment? And finally, there was a subplot involving Genesis's mom and sister, who are serial daters and completely irresponsible. I'm still not exactly sure why they were included in here except to try and round out Genesis's life.

For all my complaints, however, this wasn't a bad book. It wasn't great, and it was definitely forgettable, but it was not bad. I'm guessing that while younger readers won't love it, they'll probably enjoy it slightly more than me as a quick read.