I knew I was going to be entertained by this book, just from the name and the summary I read on the inside cover. But what I didn't expect was how much I ended up enjoying this book! Mind you, it has all the stereotypical settings: high school, everyone getting hooked up and ruining the "best friend gang~!" feeling of the years before, and then our main female lead trying to fit in as best she can to try to save that group of friendship she had with her buddies. Then again, I guess that's exactly why this book ended up being so atypical compared to today's standard for books! Our main girl isn't fawning for five BILLION pages over some random ass that likes her because. Just because. Because that's how books do it now! Reason? Logic? What anal foreign concepts are those in these hip new times where brains are removed to aid children through their pathetic attempts at LIFE? *Ahem* Pardon me, I forget. Most of the crowd IS brainless to the point of lacking the ability to even comprehend a sentence's complexity beyond, "I LOVE YOU." "OMG ME TOO! YAY! LET ME STALK YOU AND WHINE AND BITCH IF I DON'T GET ANYTHING I WANT EVEN THOUGH I DO NOTHING WORTHWHILE TO EVEN VALIDATE MY USE OF OXYGEN!"Yeah. Books like that: Not. This. Book.
And THANK the LORD it isn't! No my dears, this book is high school and drama like it SHOULD be! With actual ISSUES and anxieties that any normal human being would feel! God, it's a relief to read something that can classify as a teen-drama without it being about sluts, skanks, wusses and whores, whiny useless twits and their flippin' lack-of-a-frontal-lobe cancer. Stupidity, you have officially qualified in the Disease category.
My Invisible Boyfriend is unusual in some manners. Some might peg it as pathetic that a girl would imagine up her own boyfriend like our main character Heidi did, but is that so far from any girl's fancies? Excuse me: ANYONE'S fancies?! Come on! How many of us HAVEN'T had a dream/ideal of what our significant other was supposed to be like? And who's to say in this technological age that many don't still pull what she did? Get online, create a profile, and pretend to be your own boyfriend so your friends and the entire school doesn't think you're the only one without a boyfriend when everyone else has hooked up. Makes perfect sense. And the humor and playful imaginative cut-scenes between the actual daily life (thanks to our creative Heidi) make things nutty without coming off as over-the-top or too stupid to entertain.
In fact, the entire book has a great sense of humor! You'll get used to it fairly quickly after a couple of chapters. It's a read truly written for the teenage years, using the lingo, the references (Ahem: Portal, Project Runway, and so many more~), and all the issues that anyone would go through. Nicknames, fanciful fantasizing, crushes on people that don't exist, a part-time job, parents being weird--this book has all the essential elements. And! It's at a boarding school!! How cool is that?! <333 There are grounds and a lake~ But to get back on track, this book is so much more dorky and playful, more fun and cuter than even the title and summary can hint at. Once you pick it up, it's a really great ride. It flows smoothly, even with all the odd elements placed into it: IM message bubbles, email messages, italics to depict a scene Heidi's imagining up in her head, and so much more! Yet at the same time, it has serious sides to it too. Sides that pop up and hit you unexpectedly, sides that give you this cold feeling of fear; sides that leave you feeling like it's all hopeless and that there's no way things will get better with it all falling apart around you. It's drama that's worthwhile, playful, and has the depth of any true friendships. The kind that suffer through their ups and downs in the demand of the populace, and can be wrenched intensely because of assumptions carried far, far away~<br/>
But now let's talk a bit about the characters! First awesome part: None of them are annoying dumbasses! 8D HOORAY!!! A TEEN DRAMA IN HIGH SCHOOL WITHOUT THE DUMB! Thank the Blessed Lord!!!! <3333 These things still DO exist in this world!!! It's a MIRACLE!! *Dances and sings~!* The main character is more dork than dumbass. And she's also entertaining without being so much of a dork that no one likes her or she blatantly doesn't fit in. In fact, we avoid the whole "not fitting in" thing almost completely besides the entire aspect of it that starts the book off: her being the only one of her friends that isn't in a relationship currently, which ends up alienating her from almost all her buddies. Even with that though, her only fault is that she can be a bit blind because she's constantly trying to figure things out, so she sometimes misses stuff that's right in front of her nose. Then again her friends don't help her much at times either, because they're too excited to think straight themselves. *Chuckles* It makes for a definite comedy act at some points, and an eye roll or two with a passive shake of the head. Still nothing bad turns up character-wise to completely DESTROY THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE like in most stories gone bad today because of Dumbasses taking over the entire scene.<br/>
Plus. The friends are varied, of every different clique and personality, and it makes for a chaotically pleasant mish-mosh of people that we get to see helping our main girl detective around. Not to mention, for my anime fangirls: Yaoi~! <3 Yes, and it IS cuter than puppydogs snuggling in a fuzzy blanket together. Besides, we see some of that cuteness in one of our other great, if side, characters as well! TEDDY~! <333 God I love that boy! I know he's only scattered throughout the book every chunk of pages or so, but he is ADORABLE inCARNATE. XD Sleepy, messy, cuteness all in a package!! With artistic talent to boot, a super sense of humor, and--did I mention cuteness?--A BRAIN! YAY! So much of that has been lacking in most books today! Finally we get cute AND intelligent all in one~! *CHEERS!!*<br/>
Readers, it's definitely an entertaining and fun read: light without being pointless! It's an enjoyable book that appeals to people who like the high school drama and romance scene (with a bit of a dorky detective aspect adding some mystery~), but that's definitely not too much of one or the other to be restricted to people who like only that. You can definitely still find amusement value in this book without needing to be a fan of the high school, the drama, the mystery, the dorky, etc parts. So give it a shot! If it doesn't feel like your cup of tea after a few chapters in, then that's all good. It may not appeal to all audiences, especially if you like genres that are typically not this one. But it still remains a really good book to read for fun and for pleasure: and isn't that what half of reading is all about? <3<br/>
I do feel I need to say one more thing however, and it involves explaining my rating a bit. This book deserves the five stars I gave it. That's why I gave them after all. However, would I say I loved and adored and freaked out about the book as much as I did about say, Lord of the Rings? No. My personal taste does not classify this book as "Amazing." However! What qualifies this book for the five stars is that it was written flawlessly, flows well, has great plot and unfolds seamlessly, and the characters hold their own. No one part of the book drops below a certain standard, which makes the book, for its genre and as a piece of literary work itself, worthy of the five stars I gave it. That above all is the reason I gave it what I felt it deserved, even if my own personal tastes are not called to a book like this above others.
So, yet again, go try it out! After all, some of the "best" authors of today don't even get right what this book can accomplish. ;3
