Most teens know John Green best as the narrator of Crash Course, a YouTube video channel that gives short, humorous explanations of various points and time periods in history. Green is also an author as well as a YouTube blogger, however, and his books (notably Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars) have won several awards. Recently, Green published a video detailing the top eighteen books that he thinks are worth reading. Several of these books are available at the LHS library. (See his YouTube review here.)

I decided to read one of these books, and chose Boy Proof by Cecil Castellucci.

Boy Proof is, at first glance (and the second, and the third) just another relatively unknown author’s attempt to jump on the YA fiction bandwagon and make money off of cliches. A nerdy girl is seated next to the new boy (who is, of course, handsome and cool) and her life changes when she meets him. You could summarize Boy Proof this way if you wanted and tell the utter truth. To be frank, the first few chapters of this book have to be suffered through with a stiff upper lip: though they contain necessary exposition, they play to cliches and don’t come across as very original.

Fortunately, the story steadily gets better the further the reader progresses, and the seeming blandness of Boy Proof disappears as the characters emerge and begin playing in a setting atypical of the boy-meets-girl-in-high-school cliche: Hollywood.

The main character, Victoria Jurgen, is superficially just another nerd who thinks she doesn’t have time for love and wants to become class valedictorian by the end of the year. However, some aspects of her character are interesting. Her mother is a B-rate actress who had an early success but otherwise possesses no claim to fame, and her father is a makeup and special effects artist. Victoria herself is a cinephile, addicted to the different worlds presented on the silver screen, and has dubbed herself “Egg” after her favorite character in the movie Terminal Earth.

Max Carter, Victoria’s romantic interest and the catalyst of the plot, has stereotypical surface qualities as well. He is a handsome transfer student from London who immediately makes friends with all of the “popular people” with ease and manages to have many of the same classes that Victoria is also taking, seemingly by accident. One stereotype that Castellucci (thankfully) manages to avoid straight from the get-go is the “good-girl-seduces/redeems-bad-boy”cliche. As the plot progresses, however, Max’s character is fleshed out, and he becomes much more than a cardboard cutout that Victoria is expected to woo. Max speaks Latin and is an excellent sketch artist who wants to make a “social commentary” through his artwork. He knows a lot about history and ethics, and wants to make the world a better place.

The story is narrated from Victoria’s perspective, and though her turbulent relationship with Max predominates the plot, Boy Proof doesn’t revolve around Victoria’s love life. The subplots of the book — her relationship with her mother and her friend Rue, her photography work for her school newspaper, and her obsession with the actors in the Terminal Earth movie — help carry the story forward and weave together to form a beautiful design of personal self discovery and growth. Victoria Jurgen’s story begins with little flavor or originality, but Castellucci pulls together a remarkable novel about the teenage experience.