Hello friends, Abbey here. For my first blog, I will be
telling you all about my “hilarious” pick. I decided to start with this one so
I, too, could get revved up for my favorite pick (you guys, it’s SO GOOD, NO
JOKE) and I wanted to mix it up a bit, so I decided to go with Hilarious since
Cammie already posted her scathing Bad blog.
The purpose of the Hilarious category was to choose books
which were usually pretty terrible, but were so hilarious or had such outlandish
plots we weren’t even mad we read them. “My So-Called Boyfriend” truly fits the
bill. One word: amnesia.
The reason I couldn’t consider this my Bad one is not
something I’d like to admit. I got invested, guys. I CARED about Tashi and
Michael and his wise cool aunt. I cared what happened to them, even though the
plot was so ridiculous I never should have. Well…you’ll see. Let’s get started.
Book title: My So-Called Boyfriend (The title drew you in
already, I can tell. Why is he “so-called?” Is she truly as sassy as her title implies?”
This is also known to Cammie and I as “one of the books with black people in
it.” Which sounds terrible, but seriously, these books are not that ethnically
diverse. “His Other Girlfriend” is that one with the Asian in it. We didn’t
create the system.)
Author: Elizabeth Winfrey (Who has written one other book
which was not nearly as absurd as this one)
“Michael and I have been together forever. At least that’s
what he tells me. I can’t remember anything from before the accident. Not even
Michael.”
OH SHIT. Also, can we talk about this photo? I get a Carlton
Banks vibe from this guy, only his hair is so much taller. I like the shirt,
though. And is that…a hat in his hand? Why would you keep this out of FOCUS? Oh,
because of the hair, duh. The hat probably doesn’t fit on it.
Synopsis per the back of the book
Tashi Pendleton doesn’t know why she loves her boyfriend,
Michael Hobart. Is it his sexy smile or his romantic style? Actually, she doesn’t
know much of anything lately. All of her past thoughts and dreams disappeared
after she hit her head at the train station.
But as Tashi’s memory slowly returns, some things just don’t
add up. Why doesn’t the face in her flashbacks look like Michael’s? And why
does he get so nervous when she asks him how they met? Doesn’t he want her to
know about her past? Or was he not a part of it . . . ?
WHO KNOWS? We know. Obviously, this girl got amnesia
catfished.
We are introduced to Tashi Pendleton getting glammed up for
prom in her designer dress, gazing pensively out of the window of her father’s
penthouse and thinking about how beautiful she is. Why is she pensive in her
designer dress, you ask? BECAUSE HER MOTHER DIED, YOU INSENSITIVE FOOL. And not
even being rich and beautiful can make you forget that. Especially when your
dad is SO rich he doesn’t pay attention to you. Tear trickle.
Tashi’s rich, snotty boyfriend William arrives to pick her
up for the prom. See, her boyfriend isn’t Michael. The secret’s out. But there’s
still 160 pages to go, so ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN! They talk for a bit about how
much it sucks that they have to share their prom with gross poor kids. William says
he “hopes he doesn’t get pickpocketed” by those losers from Brooklyn. He’s a
gem. It’s a shame amnesia will tear them apart.
At the dance, Tashi and her bff Kari soon spot a fella who
is hot but clearly not as rich as William, making him immediately undesirable. Tashi
scorns him when he introduces himself as…Michael Hobart. However, when her bf
leaves her stranded on the dance floor, she forces Hobo to dance with her but
continues to be super rude to him. After dancing with her bff, they approach
Tashi (who he has now dubbed the ice queen) and…well…let me show rather than
telling.
The ice queen’s eyes
were flat and mean when she looked at us. She sniffed the air. “Do you smell
something, Kari? I think it might be that arrogant parasite attached to your hand.”
Wooooah, bitch. Tashi’s bff leaves to get some punch,
probably because she’s just realized her best friend is a terrible person.
“What’s your problem,
you spoiled, daddy’s little puppet rich girl?” I practically shouted. Are you
so afraid that the boy from the wrong side of town might thaw that ice cube you’ve
sealed yourself in that you can’t even bother to be polite? I would have
thought finishing school for brainless debutantes would have at least taught
you the art of conversation.”
Kari returns with the punch at that moment and offers Tashi
some. Tashi gladly accepts…and dumps it over Hobo’s head.
DRAMA! DRAMA! DRAMA!
Flash to three weeks later. Tashi is super depressed because
she has to go to rich kid summer camp (it’s called Camp Bon Vivant) for an
ENTIRE MONTH! She sobs into her bf’s shirt, until he kindly reminds her that it’s
Armani and pretends it was a super funny joke and he’s not just an awful
person. He gives her a teddy bear instead, to remember him by.
At the train station, she boards the train before realizing
that she DROPPED HER TEDDY BEAR when she was using the bathroom! She races
through the station and tries to tear apart a small child who found the bear.
Racing back to her train, she trips down the stairs, and hits the floor with a
smack.
Now, quick editor’s note. When I read the synopsis for this
book and she kept mentioning “the accident” I kept assuming she’d been in a
horrible car crash or something. Amnesia from that would have been believable,
not from falling on some tile. But I guess if Anastasia can get amnesia from a
fall, so can rich girls in the 90s.
Luckily, Hobo and his best friend Rocko (I didn’t nickname
him that, it’s real) have just gotten off the train after a game of b ball when
he happens to see the ruckus. With no one else to help the Ice Queen, he rouses
her by pressing a can of cherry coke to her face. She insists tearfully that
she can’t go to the hospital, but she can’t remember why…she can’t remember
anything! And so Hobo promises to take her home to his aunt who is,
conveniently, a nurse. As she disdainfully boards the subway with him, she
makes a few comments which imply that she thinks he’s her boyfriend. And suddenly,
Hobo comes up with an evil, villainous plan.
Revenge. The word
rolled around in my mind even as I ran my thumb across the soft skin of her
palm. I could get the Ice Queen back for the way she’d treated me. I had no
doubt that she would eventually remember who she was, along with the entire
past. And when she did, the look on her face would make for an award-winning
photograph. I grinned to myself.
Tashi Pendleton might
have lost her memory, but I was about to give her an experience she’d never
forget.
And so, like any good villain does, Hobo tends to Tashi
tirelessly, cuddles her and dries her tears when he has to tell her that her
mother is dead, and showers her with attention and affection. Pretty malevolent
of him, if you ask me. His aunt and Tashi’s bff both find out the truth early
on, but are surprisingly okay with it, even though this is…pretty bad. I mean,
Hobo basically kidnapped her and took her to Brooklyn, her worst nightmare, and
no one seems super concerned about it?? Kari agrees to keep her mouth shut in
exchange for some double dating with Rocko, who is also…okay with his friend
committing probably a felony.
No one can get ahold of Tashi’s father, so she continues to
stay with Hobo and his aunt. While there, she learns many valuable life lessons,
like being respectful of other humans, and how to wash dishes. Hobo starts to
realize he’s in love with Tashi within days and decides to show it through the
art of photography, which is apparently his hobby/dream we’ve just found out
about, in order to facilitate a romantic sunset photoshoot. My favorite excerpt
is when she says he should title a photo of her Woman Who Wants to Be Kissed and
he says that, as she walks toward him, it “looked as if Tashi were literally
walking into my life.” If you consider “kidnapping” and “walking” the same
thing, I guess so.
On a romantic carriage ride with Hobo, Tashi has a fleeting
feeling that she should be on a date with someone else…but quickly puts it out
of her mind. Hobo is determined to finally tell her the truth, but before he
has a chance Tashi blurts out the “L” word and he decides that’s what he meant
to say too, not that he took advantage of her amnesia in an effort to ruin her
life while she was at her most vulnerable. It’s all very romantic.
Finally, Tashi’s father calls back and she gets ready to
head home. On the morning of her departure, she heads out to get doughnuts and
coffee as a thank you for her kidnappers, when she sees an ad in the paper from
her real boyfriend, WILLIAM!!! It all comes rushing back to her suddenly. In a
panic, she hops in a cab and heads for Manhattan. She is back to being as rude
as always to the people she interacts with on her journey home, like maybe she
had bitch amnesia too.
Hobo is devastated. He cries for the first time since his
parents died. He calls Tashi to try to talk it out, to no avail. She asks, “Did
I stutter?” And no, she sure did NOT! She was straight up COLD. And he probably
deserved it, being a kidnapper and all.
When Tashi is finally reunited with William, he seems pretty
interested in his own tale of woe and not so much in hers. Life searching half-heartedly
for your hot rich girlfriend is really hard, breh. Their date the next evening
is, GASP, the same carriage ride she took with Hobo. With the SAME DRIVER!!
This now gives Tashi the convenient opportunity to compare William and Michael
under identical circumstances. So it’s no surprise when, in a romantic moment,
she accidentally says, “Oh, Michael” which she then pretends was actually “oh,
my ankle…..has fallen asleep.” Good
save, Tashi. This carriage ride is her moment of realization, and she kicks
William to the curb. William isn’t super broken up, except about the fact that
has to cancel their dinner reservations and they will no longer be the coolest,
richest, popularest couple at school.
Hobo is still working
on a way to get Tashi back. And I have to say, I think he’s losing it. Which
isn’t saying much, since you’d have to be pretty unhinged to amnesia catfish
someone.
I held the picture of
her walking toward my camera up to my eyes, drinking in the sight of her. “Oh,
Tashi,” I whispered. “Will you ever let me kiss you again?” I couldn’t help
myself. Lightly, almost as if it hadn’t happened at all, I touched my lips to
the two dimensioned mouth of the Tashi in my hands.
Hold on there, sport. Making out with a photo is not
romantic. I am genuinely concerned. I feel like the next step here is to cut
her face out of the photo and tape it to a Barbie, or maybe make 100 copies of
the photo and paste them all over his wall, surrounding them with candles and a
slaughtered lamb. Tashi, please be careful.
Finally, Kari convinces Tashi that Hobo is legitimately
heartbroken over her and isn’t faking it. She either knows this because she’s seen the sacrificial shrine and is no
true friend, or she simply doesn’t want this whole fiasco to ruin her chances
with Rocko, even though that would mean she wouldn’t have to date a person named
Rocko. Tashi so fragile and vulnerable from her amnesia realization that she
gives in pretty easily and they get back together at a fundraiser for Aunt Rose’s
hospital. Also, Aunt Rose and Tashi’s dad appear to hook up as well, because
when you have two old people in a book, they have to end up together, or
something is weird.
How do I conclude this? This book is absurd. If this ever
happened to me, there would be a lawsuit, not a carriage ride. But somehow…I
just wanted those days of sweet kidnapping in the Brooklyn brownstone with Hobo
and Aunt Rose to last forever. It takes a particularly forgiving,
unrealistically romantic, easily-sucked-in 21 year-old to fall for a story this
stupid. I will allow myself to believe
that their completely different lives and economic statuses are completely
bridged now, and Tashi will never mind having to take the subway to Brooklyn
eeever again. Since this story is just that realistic.
This book delivered on romance, and that’s how it sucked me
in. Even moreso than romance, however, this book delivered on entertainment. It’s
a nonstop drama fest. I was rapidly turning pages for hours, waiting for the
cops to show up at Hobo’s house. This is a good read if you’re looking less for
the romantic butterflies and more for a little bit of pee coming out from
laughing so hard.
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