One of the Guys
By: Lisa Aldin
Publisher: Spencer Hill Press
Release Date: Feb 10, 2015
Genre: Contemporary YA
Rating:
Tomboy to the core, Toni Valentine understands guys. She’ll take horror movies, monster hunts and burping contests over manicures. So Toni is horrified when she’s sent to the Winston Academy for Girls, where she has to wear a skirt and learn to be a “lady” while the guys move on without her. Then Toni meets Emma Elizabeth, a girl at school with boy troubles, and she volunteers one of her friends as a pretend date. Word spreads of Toni s connections with boys, and she discovers that her new wealthy female classmates will pay big money for fake dates. Looking for a way to connect her old best friends with her new life at school, Toni and Emma start up Toni Valentine s Rent-A-Gent Service. But the business meets a scandal when Toni falls for one of her friends–the same guy who happens to be the most sought-after date. With everything she’s built on the line, Toni has to decide if she wants to save the business and her old life, or let go of being one of the guys for a chance at love.”
Toni has been best friends with Ollie, Cowboy, and Loch since they were little kids. They have been inseparable throughout the years, always doing everything together. However, Toni finds herself getting sent to an all girls school and realizes that their little group is falling apart and she’s now the odd man out. In a last ditch effort to bring the gang back together and help them earn some money for college, prom, and what have you, Toni comes up with this Rent-A-Gent service. Basically, she hooks up her three guy friends with girls from the school who need a fake boyfriend and are willing to pay a lot of money for one. However, Toni soon finds out that that her plan doesn’t do anything to turn back time. She also finds herself falling for one of her best friends in the process.
“I am nothing more than a joke to them. A conversation piece for the basemen. I am no longer one of the guys.”
This is one of those coming of age stories. However, I don’t feel like Tori did all that much growing. She kept trying to mend fences and bring the team back together instead of realizing that her pushing was creating a bigger wedge. She’s described as being a tomboy but she was more gross than tomboyish. I mean, I was a tomboy. I played in the dirt, I picked worms when it rained for my uncle to fish with, then felt bad for them and dumped them in the backyard so they could be free, and I gave ants pool parties (filled up an upturned trashcan lid with water, placed leaves on the water, and put ants on their new pool floats). I hated wearing dresses, I still don’t wear heels, makeup, or tight clothes. Toni, was beyond that of being just a “tomboy”. She belched all the time, she was always wanting to scratch her butt, I just didn’t feel like those things were necessary in order to portray her tomboy nature. It actually took away from the story for me.
The four best friends didn’t really shine through for me either. We start the book with them looking for their version of the Lochness Monster. That’s the moment when their friendship starts falling apart. I just wish we got a little more time with the gang before they moved apart so that the reader could be invested in their friendship a little more. I just never felt their connecting to begin with so it was hard to feel the loss when everything started to happen.
Considering how well Toni is supposed to know these guys, she’s very bad at picking up hints. Especially when it comes to one of the guys showing an interest in her. I mean, pretty much from the beginning I saw it but for some reason she did not. It didn’t help that when she finally started to develop romantic feelings for him, she still couldn’t see the effort he was putting in.
This was an enjoyable read about four best friends who grow apart and change during their senior year of high school. I just wish the characters were fleshed out a bit more.
Toni is caught having a private and heated moment with one of her friends who is on a weekend getaway with the girl he’s pretending to date and her family.
“When Mrs. Hamilton approaches us, I panic and spin around and pretend to be going somewhere very important, but I end up walking straight into a wall. Boom.”
Great review. It’s not my favorite when the character is oblivious to the guy’s feelings. I can say that it is a bit true to life for some girls though, even if we don’t like it in books lol!