By: Flynn Meaney
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Release Date: August 7, 2012
Genre/Age: YA Contemporary
Pages: 256
Source: ARC from Around the World ARC Tours
It’s all
about supply and demand when a high school deals with the sudden exodus of male
students.
The boy
recession has hit Julius P. Heil High, and the remaining boys find that their
stock is on the rise: With little competition, even the most unlikely guys have
a good chance at making the team and getting the girl.
Guitar-strumming,
class-skipping Hunter Fahrenbach never wanted to be a hot commodity, but the
popular girls can’t help but notice his unconventional good looks. With a
little work, he might even be boyfriend material.
But for
down-to-earth Kelly Robbins, the boy recession is causing all sorts of
problems. She has secretly liked her good friend Hunter for a while now, but
how can she stand out in a crowd of overzealous Spandexers?
As if dating
wasn’t hard enough without a four-to-one ratio!
I was immediately interested in reading The Boy Recession when I heard about it,
mainly because my college had a similar male-female ratio (Okay, maybe not quite the same, but it sure felt like it
sometimes!), and it sounded like a fun story that I could totally relate to.
Having read it, I can say that I wasn’t really blown away, but it was sweet,
cute story that I enjoyed reading.
My favorite thing about it was definitely the
humor; there were several moments that had me smiling and giggling out loud. I
loved the chapter headings in particular, taken from the school’s online
newspaper. Some of my favorites:
“Popularity
of Plaid Shorts Plummets as Preppies Flee Julius”
“Senior
Girls Lobby to Take Over, Convert to Lounge Boys’ Bathroom in South Hallway”
“Cougars
Among Us: Julius Juniors and Their Freshman Boy Toys”
The characters felt like SUCH typical teenagers:
the boys weren’t drop-dead gorgeous and mysterious, they were juvenile and dumb
and often pretty gross. Which isn’t what you always want to read about, of course, but it totally fit with this
story. The stakes weren’t end-of-the-world high, everything was pretty chill,
and everyone was just generally concerned with normal high school stuff, mainly
whatever gossip was new in the dating scene. And there is a sweet, heartwarming
happy ending that will for sure put a smile on your face.
A whole year passes in the book, and we generally
just get flashes of scenes and hear about other things that happened in between
chapters. This was a little jarring at first, but once I got used to it I
enjoyed it. It made the book feel like a lot like a year of high school – when
you look back you don’t remember every single day, but you remember the year in
terms of the important events, those bigger moments when things changed – and I
feel like that was really captured well with The Boy Recession.
This isn’t necessarily the kind of book that you
can’t put down, that you’re dying to read every chance you get, but it’s a
nice, easy read, and I’d recommend it for anyone looking to just chill out and
head back to high school for a couple of hours.
