It’s Not Me, It’s You

Strohm Stephanie Kate. It’s Not Me, It’s You. 2016. 288p. ISBN 9780545952583. Available as an audiobook from Overdrive.

Avery Dennis is the social queen of her school. For as long as she can remember, she’s never been single. Not even in kindergarten. But with less than a week to go before prom, Avery finds herself unexpectedly single when Luke breaks up with her. This breakup takes place in public and suddenly Avery is the subject of everyone’s conversation at her small school. What will she do? It would be unthinkable to go to the prom alone.

At the same time, Avery is assigned an oral history project she must complete to graduate. Clever girl that she is, she decides to research her history of dating by interviewing each and every boy she dated to see how the relationship evolved and how it ended, to help her draw conclusions about why Luke dumped her. In this endeavor, she will be assisted by her best friend Coco, whom she has known since before her birth, and by Hutch, the smartest guy in her school and her lab partner for the last four years.

As Avery starts to question every boy she has ever dated, and many of the girls, an unflattering but strong portrait of the teen emerges. And as she pursues her goal of talking to everyone involved in her dating life, she begins to discover patterns and hints that the boy she should have been dating all along has been closer than she ever thought.

Told in the form of a series of interviews and interjections by Avery, the editor of the oral history project, the reader is able to explore Avery’s dating scene and the stereotypical guys and girls that surround her, from the dumb jock to the super-smart budding scientist with a few patents already to his name to the mean girl and her cronies. Absolutely hilarious, the story redeems Avery’s perceived shallowness and make her a better person in the end. Will it be enough for her to find a date just in time for prom?