I requested this one back in the day as I had every intention of reading it. However, its been years and I still haven't gotten around to it and while I feel guilty at not reviewing a book I think that I need to admit to myself that I won't be reading this one anytime soon....if at all.

Nope, sorry, just nope. Its not that it was poorly written or not interesting. I just hated the characters and everything they did. As a teacher, I find that whole situation more upsetting than you can know. It is so hard to read about these girls just messing up so many people lives and then in the end like, yeah, well, she learned, and she was having a rough time, so its ok. Nope.

Devore’s How to Break a Boy wasn’t remotely what I was expecting. The cover and title had me ready for an adorable fake dating contemporary romance. I mean, obviously I saw the darker stuff in the blurb, but the marketing made me think that would be more of a back story than it was. Instead, How to Break a Boy is a hard to take story with an often unlikable heroine who is struggling to escape an incredibly toxic friendship.


This falls into that category of books that I really struggle to rate because I think it does a lot of things very effectively, and it definitely made me feel stuff. But what it made me feel was uncomfortable and stressed and not so much anything pleasant. But it wanted to make me feel that way and it did. But I didn’t enjoy it. How to Break a Boy was largely frustrating read. Purposefully. But still.

Olivia Clayton is a mean girl. She became one when she moved to the boring southern town of Buckley, because top mean girl Adrienne seemed like the only girl in this backwater worth being friends with, so Olivia made fun of a fat girl and became friends with Adrienne. That’s one of her lesser evils throughout the book.

Adrienne clearly has anti-social personality disorder; she manipulates and fucks with Olivia constantly, but Olivia makes the choice to keep playing those games and to treat people like shit. The whole book is about Olivia owning that and trying to escape from Adrienne’s web. It’s a scary and compelling picture of what it’s like trying to get away from a toxic friendship with a psychopath best friend (the way Olivia’s convinced and cajoled by Adrienne over and over).

The book’s clearly doing a character arc thing, and Olivia is learning, but it happens very slowly. Olivia will consistently do absolutely monstrous things to people, including Whit, the fake boyfriend and love interest. Olivia spends most of the book being a pretty terrible person. While I did feel sympathy with her, most of the time I hated her thoroughly. The narrative definitely doesn’t let her off for any of her shit, but it so very hard to watch her constantly make really bad choices.

For the heavy novel that it is, I think How to Break a Boy may have worked a bit better without a romance, and I don’t think you should read this book if you came here for the fake dating. If you’re looking for mean girls, toxic friendships and psychopaths, you are in the right place.

I was not able to get into this book but knew that it would resonate with my teens and therefore purchased a copy for my collection. It hasn't been on the shelf for more than a few days before it's checked out again. It seems well loved.

This book is like Mean Girls on steroids. Olivia is the right hand girl of Adrienne. When Adrienne crosses the line and sleeps with Olivia's boyfriend, Olivia is determined to stop her Queen Bee friend no matter the cost. She decides to go after Whit DuRant, the school's golden boy, and gets him to agree to a fake relationship.

No matter what she does, however, Olivia can't escape her mean girl past, and Adrienne is making sure that Olivia puts up the fight of her life to make things right.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley for an honest review.

While this started out ok, I really got bored at the end. I felt like we just kept doing the same things over and over again. Everyone would be mad at everyone else, then Adrienne would do something and everyone would come back together for a while, until the next time.

Olivia had no idea what she was doing and was terrible at revenge, while Adrienne played her like a fiddle. I usually like mean girl books but this one was a bore.

How to Break a Boy was a solid contemporary read for me. Liv had a lot of stuff going on - taking on the meanest of mean girls (who's also her best friend), grieving the loss of her brother, faking dating Whit, sort of really dating Whit, destroying and rebuilding friendships. I wish we could have spent more time with Whit and Liv together, but I get why we couldn't. Olivia's journey from mean girl to slightly less mean girl was a bumpy road, but it's one I'm glad I went on.

Honestly, I still don’t know how I feel about this book and based on the reviews; I think there are many in a similar spot. Olivia, the main character, made me angry. So much so, I had to put the book down for a day or two and come back to it. She was an awful human being. But, behind Olivia, was Adrienne. Let’s call her the puppet master. Or, maybe a better description for her is evil incarnate. Both girls are stereotypical “mean girls.” Cheerleaders, beautiful, everybody wants to be them, but also no one likes them, seniors in the small town of Buckley. Adrienne is the brains behind the awfulness. She is devious, meticulous in her planning, and can predict a person’s reaction days before it happens. Olivia, fully knowing that most of what they do is bad, goes along with it and has for years. What choice does she have? It’s Adrienne, and you don’t want to make her mad. Her justification for following through with it all is her sadness and that she is stuck in this small town. Her brother died a few months ago, and she is carrying around a lot of guilt. Her mom isn’t exactly an emotional person, so talking to her is out. Olivia’s anger issues, depression, and inability to see how toxic her relationship with Adrienne is becomes the stuff of nightmares.

Olivia’s nightmare starts when she catches her perfect boyfriend and best friend together and neither seem very remorseful. In a rage of anger and hurt, Olivia sends out a slew of private texts in the hopes of showing the whole school how horrible Adrienne is but, in true mean girl fashion, it backfires. Instead, it turns them against her. Adrienne, in her quest to be the ultimate bitch, takes the opportunity to mess with Olivia. Here is where it got me...OLIVIA LETS HER! Olivia has so many opportunities to be the better person but rarely takes that path. She ruins friendships, the professional lives of teachers, outs her other best friend, and lest not you forget the name of the book, breaks a boy. Oh, Whit. That boy is a saint. I know he isn’t perfect, but for what transpires and how things eventually end up, he is the best person in this story.

I am giving this four stars mostly because of the writing, which was strong, the characters, and for the simple fact that it made me think and react in ways that I haven’t in a long time, especially when reading YA fiction. I don’t know if I fully agree with Olivia’s penance or ability to seemingly switch off her ability to drop Adrienne by the end. Her change seemed underdeveloped to be completely believable. Still, recommend but beware of mean girls and a ton of angst. Just not the sweet kind.

This was a pretty dark and mature teen book.. Olivia and Adrienne are the classic mean girls. They rule their high school with an iron fist. Although it s clear that Olivia plays second fiddle to Queen Adrienne. I loved that Olivia spent a lot of this book struggling with the terrible things she'd done to others in order to stay on top. Her feelings of guilt are closely tied to the circumstances surrounding her brother's death. Her destructive behavior has finally caught up to her and she's trying to make amends. Of course using Whit may not have been the best way to do it. Whit was the perfect yin to Olivia's yang. He seems perfect on the outside but as Olivia discovers, there is more to Whit than meets the eye. Whit's reactions to Olivia's destructive behavior was so real. He didn't have the perfect response ever time but he tried. When their fake relationship turns physical, real emotions start to develop between the two. I loved these two together. Olivia's relationship with Adrienne on the other hand was a total mess. I kept wanting to scream at her to get over her obsession with seeking this girl's approval. She's not a god. However Olivia's fear of revealed secrets tended to overpower her sanity. I would have liked to be in Adrienne's head for awhile. That girl was clearly messed up and I hated how she always got away with the terrible things that she did. Years of therapy are gonna be necessary to fix her. I loved that we were given insight into the other minor characters. The turning point for Olivia was heartbreaking to read. I truly loved the characters in this book. Fans of Mean Girls will enjoy this read.

Olivia and Adrienne are mean girls and mean is what they do best. When things start to change in Olivia's life she starts to realized that maybe being the mean girl isn't all it's cracked up to be. Adrienne breaks her trust and her heart so Olivia takes things into her own hands, sending out random texts from her phone. The social system of their school goes nuts and the mean really starts to show. Teaming up with her tutor, Whit Du Rant, Olivia tries to change, but her ties to Adrienne are too strong. The relationships in this story are scarily realistic and the mean girl behavior is believable. Olivia needs to decide if she is going to give up the social status she thought she wanted to have or follow the path toward her true self.