The Boyfriend App

7:12 am 24 December 2013
The Boyfriend App - Katie Sise

This book is divided into two parts. I loved the first part. The second part is the reason my score dropped by a lot.

 

In the first part of the story, we have Audrey, a smart hacker girl who can't wait to get out of high school and start college, but money problems will probably keep her having to work multiple jobs just to go. Luckily, a contest with a $200,000 prize has started for high school students to create the best app. Audrey comes up with the idea of the Boyfriend App, an app that helps people find the perfect boyfriend/girlfriend. With this comes a sudden boost in popularity, but when problems start happening, Audrey has to figure out a way to set everything right. This story was adorably cute. I loved Audrey and her friends.

 

But then part two happened, and it brought a sudden genre shift. Suddenly, the book introduced a sci fi element. Now, that alone didn't bother me. Sure, it was really sudden and didn't seem to fit the direction the story had seemed to be going, but I could go along with it. It was what the story did with the sci fi element that I hated.

Audrey discovered that the phones have a special program in them to send out bursts of sound to make teens fall in love. The company was using this to make them fall in love with their products. Audrey uses it to make the Boyfriend App 2.0. With it, girls can point their phones at a guy and force them to fall in love with them for as long as the app is active. Nobody sees anything wrong with this. And that's when all the sexual assaults began. Of course, because it's girls using the app on boys (or on other girls), no one sees this as sexual assault (or rape depending on how far some girls took it). I didn't see it that way. I will admit, my view on this is colored by a few recent cases in things I read/watch where a girl raping a guy was depicted as being romantic and fans went on about how cute a couple a guy and his rapist were. So my disgust from those cases may have made me less willing to overlook this. But something tells me I probably would still be plenty disgusted with how The Boyfriend App treats this whole situation. Instead of anyone pointing out how wrong it is, everyone wants to defend Audrey and talk about how awesome she was.

(show spoiler)

 

The treatment of the Boyfriend App 2.0 might not be a problem for a lot of readers, but it was for me. But even without it, the second part just fell flat for me compared to the first. Things just got exaggerated to a ridiculous extent and the ending tied everything together far too nicely for my taste. The book started out really well for me, but then just kind turned into a hot mess, which was too bad because part one was really good.