Title: Boys Don't Cry Author: Malorie Blackman
Published: October 1, 2010
Genre(s): Realistic/Contemporary
Page Count: 302
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:This is the explosively page-turning new novel for teenagers from the author of the award-winning "Noughts and Crosses" sequence.
You're about to receive your A-level results and then a future of university and journalism awaits. But the day they're due to arrive your old girlfriend Melanie turns up unexpectedly...with a baby.
...You assume Melanie's helping a friend, until she nips out to buy some essentials, leaving you literally holding the baby...
Malorie Blackman's dramatic new novel will keep you on the edge of your seat right to the final page.
For a book that deals with so many serious issues, Boys Don’t Cry is remarkably unserious—or it doesn’t seem to take its content seriously. This book reminds me of a super-cheesy Hallmark movie or ABC Family series. It’s eye-rollingly preachy in spots, and over-dramatically emotional in others. Beyond that, Malorie Blackman’s plot construction left much to be desired as well.
So, initially, we meet Dante. His ex comes over, dumps her baby, then splits. She’s never heard from again for the rest of the book. Dante’s dad sits him down and gives him a “serious talk” about how having a child is a life-changed experience and there’s responsibility and blah blah. So yay. Dante has a baby. Then Blackman completely switched gears and starting telling the story of Dante’s brother, Adam, who’s dealing with hate because of his sexuality. Basically, Boys Don’t Cry contains two separate storylines, but neither plot is given appropriate attention. It’s a half-baked story at best.
The part of the story featuring Dante and his baby is just…ugh. So cheesy. It’s full of these ridiculously clichéd life lesson speeches and blah blah blah. The situation felt so much like a production, like Blackman was making something that is serious into a dramatized feel-good bunch of nonsense, that I really couldn’t do anything but roll my eyes.
Then the sections dealing with Adama and his problems were even worse. First off, imagine every ridiculous “gay stereotype” you can think off. All of those were applied to Adam. If you’re going to write a gay character, do it well. Do not write him as some half-baked side-plot that adds drama, and do not just lazily make him some two-dimensional walking stereotype. That is beyond offensive. I mean, honestly. Adam could have had an entire book written about him and his problems, but instead Blackman just kind of stuck some chapters here and there, making him look like a prop to the larger, baby-related, story at hand. I found that to just be a callous treatment of LGBT characters and struggles, honestly.
And, you know, I can’t really say that Boys Don’t Cry is well-written, either. I mean, aside from the fact that the book is swamped with clichés and stereotypes, Blackman’s prose is just juvenile and weak. It was extremely readable and quick-moving, but that’s about all I’ll give it.
This was a disappointing book. Blackman had a lot of potential, but she relied too much on shallowness and clichés to get the job done. Teen parenting isn’t some feel-good Hallmark movie. Bullying and hate crime isn’t something you can blithely add to a story in order to give it some extra oomph. Boys Don’t Cry is an easy book to read, but it doesn’t sit well with me.
