Boys I Know is the story of June Chu’s senior year of high school. We follow June as she tries to figure out what she truly wants from her relationships, who she is and where her future lies as college decisions loom on the horizon, all while battling her mother’s demanding expectations and trying to maintain friendships.

First of all, isn’t the cover absolutely gorgeous? I love it.

The writing is pretty standard apart from the occasional pop-culture reference. The references weren’t frequent or direct enough to make me want to gouge out my eyeballs as they tend to do. So that’s a good thing, but we’ll see how it ages.

June is a rather flighty and rash character, which means that it’ll definitely be difficult for some people to read about her. All her decisions felt consistent with her character, no matter how frustrating. The side characters are pretty static but that didn’t hinder my enjoyment of the story.

All the romantic interests were very much flat — they all had a certain way they treated June and maybe a specific hobby and that was it. They were very much vehicles for June’s development; it would have been nice to see them do anything apart from being into June and doing their assigned hobby.

This story is definitely one that would be great for many teen girls out there — learning to stand up for yourself, learning who you are, what matters to you and what you want your future to look like. It has some positive messages about sex, which I don’t think many girls get to see. It was wonderful to see June develop through out the story and struggles would be relatable to many.

My issues with the book are thus: a) it’s very… loaded with messages. It’s the type of book that’s meant to teach you a lesson, which meant that it got pretty formulaic at times. And b) it kind of highlighted everything that was unusual about my teen years, which made it difficult for me personally to relate to June.

In summary: I definitely recommend you check this book out if you are looking for a YA novel which focuses on relationships (but not romance) with a main character who struggles under the weight of maternal expectations, and a lot of pre-college-decision existential deliberation.