The Book of Luke

Genre: Young Adult, Romance, Contemporary, Chick Lit, High School, Womens Fiction

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Synopsis:

Emily Abbott has always been considered the Girl Most Likely to Be Nice -- but lately being nice hasn't done her any good. Her parents have decided to move the family from Chicago back to their hometown of Boston in the middle of Emily's senior year. Only Emily's first real boyfriend, Sean, is in Chicago, and so is her shot at class valedictorian and early admission to the Ivy League. What's a nice girl to do?

Then Sean dumps Emily on moving day and her father announces he's staying behind in Chicago "to tie up loose ends," and Emily decides that what a nice girl needs to do is to stop being nice.

She reconnects with her best friends in Boston, Josie and Lucy, only to discover that they too have been on the receiving end of some glaring Guy Don'ts. So when the girls have to come up with something to put in the senior class time capsule, they know exactly what to do. They'll create a not-so-nice reference guide for future generations of guys -- an instruction book that teaches them the right way to treat girls.

But when her friends draft Emily to test out their tips on Luke Preston -- the hottest, most popular guy in school, who just broke up with Josie by email -- Emily soon finds that Luke is the trickiest of test subjects . . . and that even a nice girl like Emily has a few things to learn about love.

Emily has always been a nice, or at least has always been considered that. Maybe that is because of her mother, newspaper columnist and bestselling author of etiquette books. 

All comes crushing Emily's world when she founds out that she has to move back to Boston in the middle of her senior year while her father stays in Chicago. To add more drama, she is waitlisted by Brown and dumped the morning of her flight to Boston by her boyfriend while he is wearing the jacket she gave him for Christmas and eating the breakfast she prepared for him. That is what happens when you are nice. So Emily is determined to not go through this situations any more, is time to make her own decisions. But not just that. Guys need to learn to not act like total douchebags, and what could be better than create a handbook for guys?

Forced to move back to Boston, Emily joins Heywood Academy where the time capsule event is a big deal there for the seniors. Each senior puts something memorable in the capsule box and then, 50 years after, the next students of that year will see what is in the box. Emily, Lucy and Josie decide to put the Guy's guidebook in the time capsule box, because they have the strong feeling that guys from 50 years from now are going to be as jerks as their contemporary classmates. But first, they need to prove that such thing works. Who is gonna be the rat lab? Handsome and hurtingly hot Luke Preston who happens to be Josie ex-boyfriend and the guy who dumped Josie by e-mail over Christmas vacation. Could any guy do it worse? Yes, they do.

Before Emily moved to Chicago, Luke Preston was nobody. Now a few years later, Luke Preston is damaging cute and leaves every girl in Heywood Academy breathless. The worst part? He knows it. Luke Preston becomes a target to the three girls and at first he is a lovely guy trying to win Emily, but as time goes by, Luke Preston's true nature emerges dangerously. And not the way Emily was expecting. She has to spent time with him for the Guide, but she starts falling for the guy that it is supposed to be just an experiment. How do you tell the guy you are hanging out with that he was just an experiment, a game, at first? 

Things get more complicated when her friend Josie starts talking about getting back with Luke once Emily has "domesticated" him. Truth is, Emily has not been telling everything that was going on with Luke and with her and the feelings she was starting to notice to arise for him. Everything, at this point, is a total and unimaginable mess.

The thing we really liked about this book is the main character: Emily. She is sick of being played for being nice and she is smart, funny and easy to identify with. Although we do love the Luke and Emily moments that are in the book, we feel a little bit sad for the fact that Emily is playing with our hot Luke all along.

On the other side, we do not really like Josie and Lucy sometimes. what kind of best friends ask another friend to date a guy with the Guide's purposes? It is like they are the bosses of this movement and they do not take in consideration Emily's feelings. We all knew since Emily walked in Luke's car that she was going to fall for him, if we realize this, her best friends too, right? Besides, Josie was dating him before all this started. Why would she wanted to put her best friend in the living hell that Luke made her live when he dumped her? Just to "re-educated" Luke in order to date him again? That is not being a best friend, not even a friend!

Although in the end, they both recant for everything (we cannot say how or why because that would be a massive spoiler), we still hold resentment toward them. But all teenagers act without thinking, always. It is like a massive rule. You have to act like this, if not you may as well be an alien. We have got over this phase, but hey, you are never too old to do silly things. Probably the Guide for Guy's would have been an awesome idea if Luke has known since day one of it. It would have been his choice to date Emily for the sake of science or whatever, but if this was the case, Luke would not have been the real Luke either. So... 

However, we LOVE the tips that you can find in each chapter in the book. All are totally true! So guys, you should read this book too. Just to know a few things you probably do and should not do.

What do you think girls about the Tips? Interesting, uh? We bet some of you have gone like: man, it is true. They really do that thing. Right? And you guys? How do you feel about this?

If you liked the quotes, you just have to get your hands on The Book Of Luke to read more and get to know Emily and her story. We can assure you that you are gonna love it. If you like Susan Colasanti, Sarah Dessen and Jennifer Echols books, you are definitely going to go crazy about this book. 

We have to thank Jenny O'Connell for this magnificent work and for sharing Emily's life with us.