What My Girlfriend Doesn't Know

Plot: Robin is a complete dork. People even use his last name, Murphy, as a pun. Most of his peers treat him rather badly, but he somehow manages to attract Sophie Stein, who is smart, popular and pretty. When people start to make fun of Sophie and her friends abandon her, Robin starts to feel horrible and he thinks that dumping Sophie will save her the humiliation and suffering that he's gone through in his life. It seems that getting the girl of his dreams is just the beginning of his real problems.

Evaluation: This novel is the follow up to What My Mother Doesn't Know, which is written from Sophie's perspective. In this "sequel," the reader gets to see Robin's side of the story. The novel is in poetic form. Sonya Sones, the author of show more this novel, makes Robin into an extremely sympathetic character. Although Robin is dorky, he is just like any other teenage boy: he wants to fit in, be liked and have a girlfriend. It is his sweet temperament that probably attracts Sophie to being with.

Even though Robin is tempted by Tessa, who is a student in his college art class, in the end, he still chooses Sophie. The entire plot line concerning Robin's art classes shows that he desperately wants to feel cool and welcomed into a social circle. He's surprised when his peers in his art class ask him to hang out with them. The reader gets to see how lonely Robin has been because he is rejected by his school peers.

Just like Born Confused, Robin makes a connection with people through his art. When Robin and Sophie get into a fight, they communicate by drawing messages to each other. It is also art that makes the couple come together in the first place. Art also allows Robin to make new friends (even though they are in college) and he learns to relax and be a bit more confident.

One of my favorite parts about this book is that it's set in Cambridge, which I got a kick out of because I live in Boston. Little things like that make me happy. Secondly, I got Lucy, a middle school student, who frequents my library, to read the book and she enjoyed it so much that she actually read What My Mother Doesn't Know as well. show less

Skrivet i diktformat, men snarare en perfekt kondenserad berättelse än en dikt. Alla känslor, dalar och toppar, är utmärkt beskrivet. Boken handlar om Sophie som känner sig dragen till skolans nörd, Murphie. Under jullovet är hon har hennes kompisar lämnat stan och hon roar sig bäst hon kan själv. På konstmuseet stöter hon ihop med Murphie och de upptäcker att de har en massa gemensamt...

High school freshman Robin Murphy is a talented artist, but a social pariah. Pretty and popular Sophie loves him anyway; she's an artist too, and doesn't care what people think. But when their relationship turns Sophie into an object of ridicule and scorn, Robin has a heart-rending decision to make. This is a sweet and touching tale of teenage love from the boy's perspective, succinctly told in verse. Like Jerry Spinelli's latest, Love, Stargirl this also continues the love story started in an earlier book (What My Mother Doesn't Know) but from the other partner's point of view. It's an interesting technique.

Again, Sonya Sones brings a great novel in the form of poetry. What My Girlfriend Doesn’t Know is the sequel to Sones’ free-verse novel What My Mother Doesn’t Know, and was a great addition to the first book.

It was a little weird going from book one to this book because of the POV switch from Sophie as the narrator to it being told by Robin, but in time I grew to like him, as well. I feel that Sones was able to capture the mindset of a teenage male accurately, and that’s part of the success of this book. While I didn’t like his voice all the time or some of the decisions made in the story, I feel that Robin did things how even I would have at that age.

The way Sones uses poetry to tell a story, rather than prose, is what makes show more her writing so enjoyable to me. There might be a lack of word count, but there’s just as much depth to what the sparse pages hold for the reader. I also liked how there were a few poem/chapters that were “concrete poems,” which used words to create a picture instead of just having the words describe the subject.

I continue to be pleased with Sones’ work and can’t wait to see what else she has written. show less

Take a journey back to your first kiss. The way it made you feel…all the butterflies…all the excitement…all the heartache. This is the road What my girlfriend doesn't know, will lead you down. You will get to follow Robin as he gets his first real girlfriend and learns that the hardest battle is actually keeping her….while still being the high school outcast.
One of the things I loved most about this book is the nerd actually gets the girl from the very beginning! Sophie and Robin click right away and are one of the cutest couples I’ve ever read about….under the age of eighteen. They are that couple I can imagine smooching on a bench in the park, that I make a face too, and say “Come on, get a room,” even though the truth show more is I’m just jealous :)
This book is told from the point of view of Robin, teenage social pariah, who is also laugh out loud witty and even though he is just a hormone driven boy, can be very deep. The book is told in verses and has mixed reviews because it never really goes anywhere. There is no rising action and a “had me on the edge of my seat” climax. But the story is real and everyone can relate. I didn’t have any trouble being interested in this book…I actually couldn’t get enough. I wouldn’t recommend reading this one in a public place because you may start smiling or laughing to yourself, and there is a very strong chance people will think you’re crazy :)

http://shadowkissedcassie.blogspot.com/ show less

I enjoyed this, and it was really interesting to see Sophie from Robin's point of view. Robin was a believable character, and I thought his feelings were well rounded - his physical and emotional connection to Sophie, his guilt over how she is treated at school, his reaction as school changes. While he is an honest character, his words don't have quite the same rawness as Sophie's.

Ummm...No. The amount of suspension of disbelief that is required to enjoy this book is not worth the effort. Speaking as someone who works with young teens AND college students, as well as the wife of a drawing and painting professor at a well respected Fine Arts University, (Tyler) I could not, in any way, get past the fact that a gawky teen could pass successfully as a college student regardless of his artistic talent.

I can understand how the author would want to change not only the voice of the narrator (from popular girl to unpopular boy) and I can also understand giving the new narrator a certain amount of "coolness" but the author went just a little too far. He may have had the skills to keep up in a college level drawing class show more (although even this is doubtful as it seems he had very little formal training prior to taking the class) but he would not have been able to keep up socially.

I realize that I'm coming down pretty hard on the character and that is not my intention, but I really grate against the belief that artists are completely outside ALL social norms and would welcome a fifteen year old with open arms and not realize he was just a kid. show less