Review: How to Keep a Boy as a Pet by Diane Messidoro

How to Keep a Boy as a Pet by Diane Messidoro

[Goodreads page]

Author: Diane Messidoro. Website|Twitter
Published: 7 May 2012 (Electric Monkey)
Format: paperback
Pages: 338
Amazon: paperback|Kindle
Waterstone's: paperback
Book Depository: paperback

Source: Borrowed from library

Plot Summary (from Goodreads):
Can taming a gorgeous boy really be as easy as walking a dog?
Circe Shaw is on a mission. She must transform into a fabulously sophisticated journalist and discover the amazing scientific truth about boys. Urgently.
But life is beyond complicated. Circe has to deal with a poisonous rival, her mum’s annoying ‘just friends’ men and her own Dark Past.
Can Circe’s daring investigation really teach her the facts of love?
Will it help her finally get a boyfriend?
Or will it break her heart…?

My Review:
When Circe Shaw's new best friend and her childhood guy best friend get together, she feels a little left out. She decides to start a blog to cover the hottest topics, only it turns out what she's best at writing about is her own life and her hopeless efforts at finding a boyfriend. With her new ambitions to be a top journalist, the book follows Circe as she keeps her readers up to date on life and love in "the middle of nowhere".

I LOVED this book. This is one of those reviews where I'm not quite sure where to start! I didn't know too much about the book but it grabbed my attention at the library with its super-cute cover. As soon as I started it I knew it was my kind of thing. The book is written through Circe's blog posts and any book written in a different style like that gets me excited! I think it's even more exciting reading a blog written through blog posts when you're a blogger yourself, too. The way its written means it isn't really broken up into chapters which I thought would bother me, but it didn't. It just made it harder to put down!

Circe as a character won me over instantly. Her voice throughout the book is just hilarious. She's so witty and funny and you get a great look at her personality through her blog posts, from her pets named after film stars, her love of R-Patz and her disastrous attempts at getting dolled up to impress a guy. Her character went a lot deeper when I expected as well. The book may revolve around her attempts to get some kind of love life but there is so, so much more to her as a character than that. Circe lives with her single mother and she's made the move from London to the middle of nowhere in the British countryside. (The overall British-ness was also something I adored, than that's coming from a Brit!) There's a lot of issues Circe keeps glossing over which are obviously quite important to her, and it's only a matter of time before they're explained a bit more, and I was blown over by the writing when things started to come to life.

When I picked this book up I was expecting a light, fun, girly read and whilst it certainly has those elements, it's SO much more than that. If you're put off by the title then I'd urge you to give it a try anyway because I think there's a lot more to this book than meets the eye!

How to Keep a Boy as a Pet gets the balance between fun, light-hearted boy drama and serious, real life problems bang on. I think there's something for everyone in this book, and if you're looking for a new contemporary read then I would urge you to go and look this one up!


Rating: 5*
What to read next: What Not to do in the Dark by Diane Messidoro - the follow up to How to Keep a Boy as a Pet - which is published in 2013.
Books like this: Dreaming of Amelia by Jaclyn Moriarty