DNF: Love and Other Theories

Summary (GoodReads)

If you want more, you have to give less.

That’s the secret to dating in high school. By giving as little as they expect to get in return, seventeen-year-old Aubrey Housing and her three best friends have made it to the second semester of their senior year heartbreak-free. And it’s all thanks to a few simple rules: don’t commit, don’t be needy, and don’t give away your heart.

So when smoking-hot Nathan Diggs transfers to Lincoln High, it shouldn’t be a big deal. At least that’s what Aubrey tells herself. But Nathan’s new-boy charm, his kindness, and his disarming honesty throw Aubrey off her game and put her in danger of breaking the most important rule of all: Don’t fall in love.

Why DNF?

I don't usually bother with books I don't finish because usually that seems like a waste of time, but I made it a fair ways into the book - about 50% - to see how it turned out, and it made me so angry with the hooking up and 'slut' shaming that I just had to share my fury. 

See, Aubrey and her friends are the pretty, popular girls of their high school, they party hop and hook up and live by these rules they have made up (the theories of the title) about how to handle everything. Their ring-leader is Shelby who, really, is a poor-man's Regina George wannabe, but the way Aubrey and her friends talk about her is like Shelby is the messiah or something, and they do pretty questionable stuff while following her like sheep, and they don't see anything wrong with that. 

The parts where the girls were around Chiffon - and ex-friend whom Aubrey & Co. froze out when they were all 15 because a guy liked Chiffon and not another girl in their group - made me cringe and killed any chance for me to like them. They were the worst kind of bullies. 

The guy, Nathan, started okay enough but soon morphed into one of Aubrey and Shelby's cronies, following right along with the questionable behavior. 

No, I didn't like any of these girls but I could at least made it to the end if Aubrey (who narrates in first person) had a little internal consistency, or just a back bone, but no, she was just the worst kind of mean you can be: blind-follower-can't-say-no kind of mean. 

DNF