The Book of Luke

“ ‘…it has to call guys out on all the crappy things they do. We’re not here to coddle their ego. We’re here to straighten them out, not play Miss Manners…I’m not doing this to be nice, I’m tired of being nice. Now it’s their turn.’ ”

Emily Abbott was the girl in high school voted Girl Most Likely to Be Nice; she was always taught proper manners from her mother. Now her family is breaking apart and Emily, her mother, and her little brother are moving back to Boston after living in Chicago for three years. On top of that, her boyfriend Sean dumped her because of the move. Emily sees the move as an opportunity to transform herself from the polite, proper girl she is always labeled as to a completely new person.

After arriving in Boston and starting back up at Heywood High School, Emily reunites with her two best friends. Together they try to figure out what they should put in the senior class time capsule. A bright idea hits Emily like an oncoming train. The girls decide to create a handbook for guys pointing out all the “Guy Don’ts,” hoping that it will help future girls with their relationships. They came up with “The Guy’s Guide to Girls— A Handbook for the Clueless.”

Anyone could make a guide and hope that it’s helpful, but actually testing it and making sure it is useful is a completely different task. Therefore, the best friends devise a covert operation to test their tips in order to see if they can change the worst of the worst into a good boyfriend, and record the process and results in a notebook. The catch is that the worst of the worst is Emily’s best friend’s ex boyfriend, Luke Preston. This is when the guide became known as “The Book of Luke.”

The Book of Luke by Jenny O’Connell is a wonderful story about friends, relationships, deceit, and the internal conflicts of following what you should do versus doing what your heart tells you to do.