How To Break A Boy by Laurie Devore #BookReview

Title: How To Break A Boy
Author: Laurie Devore
Publisher: Imprint
Published Date: January 31st 2017 by
Genre: YA, Contemporary,
Page Count:342
Format: Hardcover

My Rating: ★ ★ ★

Goodreads Summary: 
Keep your enemies close, but your friends closer.

Olivia Clayton has mastered the art of tearing others down to stay on top. She and her best friend, Adrienne, rule their small southern town like all good mean girls do--through intimidation and manipulation.

After Olivia suffers a family tragedy and catches Adrienne sleeping with her boyfriend, Olivia is over it. She decides to make a change--but it's impossible to resist taking Adrienne down one last time. Up to her old tricks, Olivia convinces golden boy Whit DuRant to be her SAT tutor and her fake boyfriend. But when it starts to feel real, Whit gets caught up in Olivia and Adrienne's war.

Olivia may ruin everything she touches, but this time she won't go down without a fight--not if it means losing Whit.

And definitely not if it means losing what's left of herself.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

 My Review:

"The way things were. I try not to think about it too much. I know what's right and what's wrong, who's good and bad, and I know if you sin against enough people, ultimately the universe will find you. I always knew better. That's probably way worse. I should've known even before he died."

I had a lot of mixed feelings about this book. On one hand I did like the majority of it and the fast pace of the store. On the other hand though I really disliked Olivia and her friends as characters and how they were constantly manipulating those around them.
So while this book was fast to read it is full of characters that are problematic when it comes to how to we treat other people around us.
As for the LGBT character in the story she was constantly having to hide behind a fake boyfriend in order to make life bearable in the smallish town they lived in. Also her "best friends" treated her horribly about it and at times it seemed they used it as something to hold against her with them telling the world if she didn't follow along.
As for the main character Olivia she hide behind her brothers death and constantly used that as a excuse for her being a mean girl. While her "best friend" did know things that she thought would make people hate her, in all actuality if she just would have given it more thought she would have seen differently.

"I never should have let her control me. I should've been a better person"

I also can see that while she was traumatized by her brothers death and other events that happened when she was a child, it still wasn't a good excuse in my opinion for how she treated others and ultimately was making her own life self destruct as well.