Title: Sam Cruz’s Infallible Guide to Getting Girls
Author: Tellulah Darling
Genre: New Adult; Contemporary Romance; Humour
Publisher: Te Da Media
Publication Date: October 2012
Pages: 244
Rating: 3.5 stars
Synopsis (from goodreads):
Why the hell can’t chicks be more like guys?
That question plagues high school senior Sam Cruz. Sam is perfectly happy being a player. He just wishes girls wouldn’t change the game from sex to relationships. It makes him look like an asshole. But when Sam’s best friend, Ally Klinger, gets dumped, she begs him to transform her into someone who can screw around then screw off. No risk of heartbreak that way. It’s Sam’s chance to create the perfect female AND cheer up his best friend. Armed with Sam’s Three Step Guide to Backseat Success, Ally gets the game better than Sam thought she would and before long, Sam has his wish: the female version of himself. Too bad it’s driving him nuts. Told from Sam’s and Ally’s alternating POVs, Sam Cruz’s Infallible Guide to Getting Girls is a fast-paced romantic comedy that follows these teens as they navigate the minefield of sex, love, and friendship.
This book contains strong language, drinking, euphemisms, and lots of “bow chicka wow wow.”
My Review:
At times this book was crass and crude (the title character manages to have meaningless sex in a parking lot in the first chapter) but it did have its sweet moments to balance out the sex and swearing.
Seventeen year olds Ally and Sam have been friends forever – their mothers met at a mothers group back in the day. When Ally’s boyfriend of two years dumps her for someone else she approaches Sam to help her get some game. Sam, master seducer that he is, decides that is his chance to change the world. To create a girl who has sex like a guy and makes none of the messy relationship blunders that the fairer gender is so prone to making.
Needless to say it doesn’t exactly go the way either of them were expecting.
There were a lot of things I really liked about the book. It tapped into the teen flick vibe perfectly. Ally is a She’s All That girl especially with respect to the make over… just remove the glasses give her some clothes with shape, get rid of the ponytail and she goes from eco-warrior Hipster to dazzling man-eater. Sam is a player without a cause who leaves a trail of one night stands in his wake. But he does have a redeeming quality – his life long friendship with Ally. I loved the banter between the two. And if I’ve learned anything from TV and movies it’s that if a guy is nice to kittens then he must be a good guy (so I suppose that’s another point in his favour… ). The alternating point-of-view chapters were well done – there’s minimal overlapping of events which keeps the story pace going and it was great to see the thoughts of both the characters during the novel.
Other characters in the book were fun to read too – Ally’s cousin Rachel and her boyfriend Ian who were retro college students were my favourite of the supporting characters with their advice and drama.
This book was fun to read and I thought it managed to perfectly capture the sex-crazed teen movie vibe perfectly.
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