What Boys Really Want

December 12, 2011
Hautman (The Big Crunch) demonstrates the gulf between male and female perspectives by alternating between the first-person narratives of high school juniors Adam and Lita, whose friendship is put through the wringer thanks to miscommunication, jealousy, and plagiarism. When Adam decides to write a book about what boys want and how they think, it drives a wedge between him and Lita, with Lita annoyed that Adam is trampling on her dream of becoming a writer (the very idea that he write an advice book was hers to begin with). But Adam discovers that writing a book is harder than he thought, so he ends up stealing content from the Web, including Lita’s snarky, anonymous dating-advice blog. When Adam self-publishes his book, their conflict explodes. Hautman captures the angst, awkwardness, and joy of crushes and first dates with humor and heart, as Adam, Lita, and their friends fumble their way into relationships. Despite Adam’s overall haplessness, he gets one thing right: “Nearly all problems between the sexes can be boiled down to one thing: mistaken assumptions.” Hautman proves this to be true again and again. Ages 13–18. Agent: Flannery Literary.

December 1, 2011
High-school student Adam Merchant is writing a small volume on what boys and girls really want, an irresistible topic for his classmates. It takes him a whole month to write it, but lifting much of the information from a Miz Fitz advice-column blog makes the work go much faster. When finished, the $10 self-published work becomes so popular it attracts the attention of a real publisher. Little does Adam know that his on-and-off-again friend Lita Wold is Miz Fitz, who's not thrilled when she realizes that Adam has stolen her words. Told in Adam's and Lita's alternating voices, this is 300-plus pages of tedious teen banter over what boys and girls really think, plus a disappointingly mind-numbing subplot that finds Dennis liking Blair while Lita thinks he ought to like Emily, and other high-school drama. Originally, as explained in the acknowledgments, Hautman was to write Adam's part, and a female writer was going to write Lita's part, but the project was dropped when it became no longer fun. Years later, the project was revived, but it's still not fun, though it has its moments of humor and will certainly appeal to teen readers looking for an easy read and cheap thrills. A title that ought to be as appealing as the book Adam publishes but isn't; Hautman is capable of far better. (Fiction. 13-17)

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 1, 2012

Gr 8-11-Best friends since kindergarten, Adam and Lita are now high school juniors. While Lita anonymously runs a sassy advice blog as "Miz Fitz," Adam hatches a plan to write a book about how boys and girls really think. With more advance orders from girls than guys, he decides to cater to his buying audience by focusing on what boys really want. He uses Lita's blog as his main source for research, borrowing liberally from his friend without realizing it. Aspiring author Lita grows envious of Adam's literary pursuits, so she turns her attention to helping her other BFF, Emily, lure mutual pal Dennis's attention away from new girl Blair. The plot thickens when Emily warms up to Adam, and Lita falls for a university student whom she spies getting into a car with... Blair. As a supporting character observes, "You just never know who will hook up" (though the hook-ups are G-rated and sexual references are mild). Things come to a boil when Adam throws himself a book publication party, and Lita discovers that he's plagiarized her blog. The book moves along at a snappy pace, with chapters alternating between the main characters' points of view. Chapters open with Miz Fitz's advice or excerpts from Adam's book; these humorous snippets ring true. The novel's tone may remind readers of the snarky but sweet movie Easy A, or Don Calame's equally funny Beat the Band (Candlewick, 2010). This is fresh, realistic YA fiction at its best.-Amy Pickett, Ridley High School, Folsom, PA

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2011
Grades 8-11 Where Hautman's The Big Crunch (2011) was an aching and soulful romance, this is the flip side: fun, sarcastic, blundering, preposterous, but every bit still a romance. The story is told in the alternating perspectives of two 16-year-old longtime friends, the optimistic, fun-loving Adam and the whip-smart but judgmental Lita. Though Lita dreams of becoming a writer, her romance novel has stalled, and she kills time as the infamous power blogger Miz Fitz, who anonymously doles out caustic advice to legions of readers. Adam, meanwhile, stumbles upon an idea to write a straight-talk self-help book for high-school girls, What Boys Want, which borrows liberally from the Miz Fitz sitebut who would ever notice, right? True, it's not the most original setup, but Hautman writes fearlessly from both male and female perspectives with little care about what's politically correct, and he admirably resists the urge to bring Adam and Lita together as lovers. From the always reliable Hautman, this romance delivers predictable pleasures.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)