Jenn's Review: Boyfriend From Hell

Summary: Fifteen year-old Megan Barnett and her single mom, Suze, have a special relationship—they are friends, close friends, who do almost everything together. “But come on, guys, she’s my mother… Can I really tell her that while we’re snuggled up on the sofa watching Spider Man Three, I’m secretly undressing James Franco with my eyes? Of course not…” The special bond takes a turn for the worse when Suze decides to start dating again. She hasn’t had a man in her life since Megan’s father left ten years ago. Enter two mysterious young men, Megan’s new classmate, sinfully attractive bad boy, Guy Matson, and the dangerously handsome art dealer, Armando. Before long Megan and Suze both wind up in steamy relationships. But neither of the handsome pair is quite what he seems. In fact, one of them is Satan, with his sights set on a new bride. Megan has precious little time to figure out how to stop him. If she doesn’t, either Megan or Suze are quite literally going to HELL.

Review: I had high hopes for Boyfriend from Hell when I requested it from Library Thing, but it fell a little short of my expectations. Don't get me wrong, it was a fun read, but it felt a little underdeveloped.

The characters are few that their lack of depth makes them caricatures. I wanted to shake Megan. She starts off the book as an incredibly immature teen, and while she does develop into a stronger person along the way, I'm still not sure I liked her very much.

Part of the problem for me was the short chapters (1-3 pages on average). Mr. Van Lowe managed to complete his story advancement in that amount of space, but without the elaboration it so richly deserved, it came off as choppy.

The plot devices were also killers (Who gets kicked off the Mathletes for kissing?!? Seriously?!?) though the story was was amusing, the plot twist, which I should have seen coming a mile off but didn't (probably due to the fact that I wasn't terribly invested in the story), was just one leap of faith too many for me. It made the story seem trite.

This is probably an excellent read for a teen who is not a reader. It's not overly complicated and it has very few characters to keep track of making it easy to put down and pick back up again. However, an experienced teen will find it trivial, and an adult that reads YA will find it not worth their time.

Final Take: 2.5/5.0