How (Not) to Find a Boyfriend

April 29, 2013
When Nora Fulbright started high school, she decided to create a new Nora: she switched glasses for contacts, buried her chess star past, and stopped raising her hand so much. As sophomore year begins, she’s made the cheerleading squad, and it looks like the handsome fullback is taking notice of her. Nora’s “popularity quotient” is on the rise, but she’s still afraid that her inner geek will out. Worried that the cheer captain will mock her for taking AP classes, she switches her schedule, then has to switch it back so she’ll have classes with Adam, the brainy and adorable new boy in school. Debut author Valentine initially overstates the divisions between the smart and the not-so-smart, but the story starts to cook as Nora is whiplashed between the two, and as the complicated series of deals she makes to get closer to Adam lead her into social disaster. As Nora finds a way to balance cheerleading and chess, Valentine offers a book about honoring the truth, following one’s bliss, and being oneself that avoids being saccharine or overly prescriptive. Ages 12–up.

May 15, 2013
This sharp-witted debut pours on the wry comedy as a brainiac girl tries to hide her intelligence so she can be popular. In middle school, Nora was not only the teachers' pet, but "their teacup Chihuahua." With both parents university professors, excelling in school is a family priority. Nora wants to be popular as a sophomore at her new high school, so to her feminist mother's dismay, she turns her gymnastics training into a spot on the cheerleading squad. Even better, she attracts the attention of dumb-as-a-post football-hero Jake and sits at the popular table in the cafeteria. But she instantly loses her heart to handsome Adam, another newcomer who's as smart as she is. Having already dropped her AP classes, Nora traps herself in a tangle of lies to get into Adam's. Her schemes predictably backfire, and she becomes a pariah in the school. Can Nora turn things around to win her friends back and, more importantly, win Adam's heart? Valentine has a bright sense of humor, pitching it at those readers who can identify with Nora. Although the book gets a tad preachy, readers will discern that Adam is attracted to Nora and laugh as her efforts to get closer to him work against her in a continuing comedy of errors. Smart and witty. (Fiction. 12 & up)

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August 1, 2013

Gr 7-10-Much to her feminist mother's disapproval, "born-again normal person" Nora Fulbright has dropped the "smart girl" act that kept her "larval" in middle school and is dedicating her high school career to increasing her "popularity quotient." She has exchanged gymnastics for varsity cheerleading, shed her chess-playing past, and dropped down from AP classes. Then chess-loving, brainiac, super-hot Adam Hood moves to town. Nora immediately goes to work masterminding a series of swaps to get closer to him, beginning with an agreement to go on a date with creepy, unpopular Mitch in exchange for a printout of Adam's class schedule. Not surprisingly, the swaps backfire, and Nora realizes that she failed to operate under the three principles of chess-foresight, caution, and circumspection. She goes into damage-control mode and manages to make good on all of her botched swaps. Although the resolution borders on being unrealistic, Valentine's tale will appeal to teen girls. In the same vein as E. Lockhart's The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (Hyperion, 2008), the message of embracing who you are is one that teens need to hear.-Nicole Knott, Watertown High School, CT

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2013
Grades 7-12 As a sophomore on the varsity cheer squad who has the attention of dumb-as-rocks (but hot) footballer Jake Londgren, Nora Fulbright has morphed socially from larval statepractically a worm into a fully formed butterfly. In order to up her PQ, or popularity quotient, brainy Nora switches out of her AP courses and joins the masses. But when Adamcute, crazy smart, and gives Nora the good kind of shiversmoves to town, how can she get him to see that she is not just a ditzy cheerleader? And that she is not interested in Jake? In Valentine's sassy debut, readers will groan as Nora messes everything up, and may grow frustrated with her choices ( For a smart girl you've had a pretty solid run of stupid ), but if they relate to her plight, they will find her funny, too.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)