Babe In Boyland by Jody Gehrman

Goodreads Description: "When high school junior Natalie---or Dr. Aphrodite, as she calls herself when writing the relationship column for her school paper---is accused of knowing nothing about guys and giving girls bad relationship advice, she decides to investigate what guys really think and want. But the guys in her class won't give her straight or serious answers. The only solution? Disguising herself as a guy and spending a week at Underwood Academy, the private all-boy boarding school in town. There she learns a lot about guys and girls in ways she never expected-especially when she falls for her dreamy roommate, Emilio. How can she show him she likes him without blowing her cover?"


My Review: This book makes me sad. And do you wanna know WHY this book makes me sad? Because I had always wanted to read it so badly when I saw it at the stores, and I loved Gehrman's Triple Shot Bettys books, and I wanted SO badly for this book to be good---but it wasn't. It didn't live up to my expectations at all, and that severely disappointed me. That's not to say this book was all bad, because it wasn't. It was vaguely amusing at some parts...but definitely not good enough to please me, and here's why!
          First of all, this book is a TOTAL copy of the movie She's The Man! It'd be one thing if the plot was just girl-disguises-herself-at-boy's-school. That plot is a little more general and a lot of people have used it before, and can use it again. However, when Natalie fell for her roomate (AHEM, like Viola fell for Duke!) and got a catty mean girl trying to screw her over and blow her cover (AHEM, like her brother Sebastian's crazy ex-girlfriend, Monique!) the story got lame. I mean, come on. Jody Gehrman had a chance to make this plot original and unique---despite some similar factors with the movie---but she kept it virtually the same! Yeah, SOME things were different...but for the most part, it was like watching the movie. But it was less funny than the movie. Not exactly a good thing.
          Next, the whole undercover-reporter plot itself! What HAPPENED to that? It totally went down the drain! At first, Natalie seemed really driven and motivated to uncover all sorts of guy secrets, and I was really intrigued. But as the book went on, it became more about just keeping her cover and falling in love with Emilio, and less about the research. She actually barely DID any research. She just asked some lame questions to some guys for about thirty seconds, and that's it. And at the end of the book, she wrote a random article that didn't REALLY answer many questions or uncover many "secrets." So what, I ask, was the point of the whole plan?
          And lastly, Natalie herself. She was an okay character and all. She was smart and relatively sassy (I always like sass in a girl character. It makes her...I dunno, more fun.) But she was having SO much trouble keeping her cover that I was rolling my eyes. I know it can't be the easiest thing in the world, pretending to be a guy---but it honestly probably was not as hard as SHE was making it seem. She was acting like a total ditz!
          Anyway. I really, really, REALLY wanted to love this book, but unfortunately, I couldn't. It just wasn't very smart or funny or fresh. If anything, I had to force myself to keep reading by the end of the book. Oh well---better luck next time! 


Cover: It's so funny how I don't like the book but I LOVE the cover! The photo is simply adorable and funny and I love the fonts used in the title. Very dramatic and fun. I also liked the lime green and yellow colors used; they really made the book pop off the shelf whenever I saw it at the store. 


Overall Grade: C-