A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl

Reader reviewed by gonkat

The book A Bad Boy Can Be Good for A Girl by Sara Lee Stone is good. This coming of age story is about three completely different girls who fall for the same guy. He makes them believe that they're special and that he actually loves them. Instead, he's actually using them. At school he's known to be a player but these girls think he's changed.
This book is full of actual experiences that some teenage girls go through. Thinking they fall in love and then giving something special to a guy that doesn't deserve it. I highly recommend this book to anyone that likes books like this.

Reader reviewed by gonkat

The book A Bad Boy Can Be Good for A Girl by Sara Lee Stone is good. This coming of age story is about three completely different girls who fall for the same guy. He makes them believe that they're special and that he actually loves them. Instead, he's actually using them. At school he's known to be a player but these girls think he's changed.
This book is full of actual experiences that some teenage girls go through. Thinking they fall in love and then giving something special to a guy that doesn't deserve it. I highly recommend this book to anyone that likes books like this.

Reader reviewed by christie

i love this book.its about three girls each a different section in a part of the book telling how they all dated a guy.the guy is a bad boy and acted like the guy each girl acted like and then played them all when he got what he wanted.and the three girls got labeled as wrong things cuz the guy spread rumors.it shows how some guy are really just jerks.no offense to any guy but im calling the guy in the book a jerk.i also think a bad boy cant be good for a girl.

Reader reviewed by Melissa Palmer

A Bad Boy can be Good for a Girl is an edgy novel but a powerful one.  It has a good lesson.  The verse novel format adds to its strength.  While some language and content would make it hard to use as a classroom book, I have had HS students read it independently.  The girls love it.

Reader reviewed by Devan Woten

this book is true to life. if you dont like books that talk about real things that can happen in life (ex. from book: SEX) i wouldn't read it. this book is believable. and true to life. it is one of my favorite books i have ever read. you should really try it. and i think its good for teens to read it like middle school and high school age. cause it can really happen whether you like the idea of it or not.

Reader reviewed by Khy

Josie, Nicolette, and Aviva all get mixed up with a senior boy--a cool, slick, sexy boy who can talk them into doing almost anything he wants. In a blur of high school hormones and personal doubt, each girl struggles with how much to give up and what ultimately to keep for herself. How do girls handle themselves? How much can a boy get away with? And in the end, who comes out on top? A bad boy may always be a bad boy. But this bad boy is about to meet three girls who won't back down.

Review:

Ever read one of those books that you really want to review and talk about because it's so good but you have to think pretty hard for things to say about it and your review turns out kind of suckish? For me, that book is A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl.

This book had a lot going for it. Right at the beginning of each girl's POV, the girl said what she was like. I did find the girls kind of similar, but that didn't really bother me. Anyway, the girls were described well and I felt like I knew them. I also felt like I knew unnamed bad boy jerk, even though he wasn't even described that much. The girls just told how he was really hot, but I still felt like I knew him. Maybe because he was a stereotypical bad boy jerk, but the kind that of stereotypical bad boy jerk that actually exists. (Did that make sense?)

So, plot. It was like many subplots in books. There was the girl head over heels for the boy who only wanted her for sex, but she was virtually unaware of that fact. I should dislike this fact, but I don't. This book was just so much better than the other books with this plot. It delivered such a powerful message that I didn't mind the plot I see all the time. It was just a lot better.

And one thing that made me really happy was the fact that they talked about Forever by Judy Blume so much. I absolutely love that book, so seeing it actually play a big part in this book made my inner Judy Blume fangirl happy.

If you don't read this book, especially if you are a teenage girl, you are missing out big time. READ IT I TELL YOU! READ IT! There were so many things that should have bothered me, but they didn't because the book was so engrossing and wonderful.

On the blurb page, Cynthia Leitich Smith (author of Tantalize, in case you didn't know) said this book was "Sure to be the new Forever." While I do not think their should be a new Forever, since Forever was just so wonderful, but if, for whatever bizarre reason, there had to be a new Forever, I'd pick A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl to be it.

Reader reviewed by ren5

It is an amazing book. It is in poery form which makes it a quick read. I love poetry for but even if you dont you will still fall in love with this book. I have recomened it to all of my friends.

It was great I felt so connected to the characters. It is written so you understand where the characters are coming from.

Reader reviewed by abscae

I judge a book by it's cover. Unfortunately, I judged this one to be all pink and fluffy, and passed by it on the shelves. However, when I read it, it gave me a new insight into a girl's perspective.

First, there's Josie, a girl who promised never to put her friends below a boy. Yet when she catches the attention of a jock, all ideals and morals fly, and she is left falling for him. When their relationship is torn when the jock leaves her, Josie recooperates through reading Blume's Forever. Scribbling a warning for other girls into the very last pages of the novel, Josie finds closure.

Next comes Nicolette, a girl aware of her sexual abilities. When she dates the jock, she finally sees the difference of love and sex, only to have the boy leave her. Finally, there's artsy Aviva who gives her virginity to the jock, only to find it all lacking. When once again dumped by the jock, she finds solace in Forever, which now holds many rantings of other teenage girls.

Funny and heart wrenching, the characters come to life in one's mind and leave a reader breathless.

Reader reviewed by Jocelyn

This is a verse novel about three different girls, nothing in common, who barely know each other, and what they do have in common: one bad boy.

Josie is a confident freshman who doesn't need a guy to feel like "a legitimate person." High school, however, can do a number on even the most confident girl's self-esteem. Before long, Josie is dating a "studly senior." However, this bad boy isn't all he's cracked up to be. Josie learns the hard way about bad boys, and she writes a message to other girsl: a warning, in the back of her school library's copy of Judy Blume's classic Forever.

Next in line is Nicolette, a junior. She's not sitting around and waiting for guys; she's going to them. She sees power in it when they want her.

Aviva calls herself a "criss-crosser." She's got friends in all the cliques, but is a member of none. She finds out what this bad boy's all about, too.

They each learn the same things about this popular, good-looking guy. They find out who he really is, even though everyone in school thinks he's great. In the process, however, they also find something of themselves.

A Bad Boy Can Be Good For A Girl, Tanya Lee Stone's powerful debut novel, is a must read. The poetry flows nicely; it's easy to understand and follow, not the stereotype of hard to understand, complicated, unenjoyable stereotype of poetry created for so many people in high school English classrooms across America. It's an honest story, with a good voice, and the nameless bad boy is someone that can be found at every high school.