Rowena’s review of The Art of Lainey by Paula Stokes.

Soccer star Lainey Mitchell is gearing up to spend an epic summer with her amazing boyfriend, Jason, when he suddenly breaks up with her—no reasons, no warning, and in public no less! Lainey is more than crushed, but with help from her friend Bianca, she resolves to do whatever it takes to get Jason back.

And that’s when the girls stumble across a copy of The Art of War. With just one glance, they’re sure they can use the book to lure Jason back into Lainey’s arms. So Lainey channels her inner warlord, recruiting spies to gather intel and persuading her coworker Micah to pose as her new boyfriend to make Jason jealous. After a few “dates”, it looks like her plan is going to work! But now her relationship with Micah is starting to feel like more than just a game.

What’s a girl to do when what she wants is totally different from what she needs? How do you figure out the person you’re meant to be with if you’re still figuring out the person you’re meant to be?

I adore contemporary Young Adult reads. The sweet romances of first love or summer camp romances, I’m all about reading them and when I first read the blurb for this one, it sounded interesting. I’ve never heard of Paula Stokes before but I was willing to give her stuff a go and I can tell you that after reading this one, I’ll definitely be reading more from Stokes.

Lainey Mitchell just got dumped by her boyfriend Jason and she wants to get him back. To do that she needs the help of the book, The Art of War. She learns a lot about war strategies and a lot about herself in the process and the story was great fun to be a part of.

In an effort to get Jason to want her back, Lainey starts a fake relationship with one of the guys that she works with, Micah.  Micah, who is trying to win his ex-girlfriend back as well agrees to the crazy scheme. The shenanigans that they get themselves into was a lot of fun to read about. The more time they spend together, the more real their “relationship” starts to feel and watching it all from the sidelines was great. They were complete opposites in the beginning but that seemed to work in their favor by the end of the book.

Lainey was a character that at first, I thought I wasn’t going to like all that much because of the way she looked down at the people around her. She wasn’t always easy to like but I’m glad that I stuck it out because she was completely real and I liked seeing the change come over her. Micah was a great influence on her and so was her best friend Bianca. She had a great support system in those two and I was glad for her.

Micah was full of awesome. I liked his character and I adored the way that he made no apologies for who he was. He just was and to hell with anyone who thought any different. I liked how he didn’t change himself to be what Lainey wanted him to be and I really liked the kind of brother he was to his little sister. I completely adored him and was glad that things worked out for him in the end.

This book was cute and fun and full of fluff but I didn’t care because I had a great time reading it anyway. This is the perfect summer read.  It’s got a great cast of characters and an imperfect protagonist that you will come to love and I thought Stokes did a great job of pulling the readers into this story. I definitely recommend this book.

Grade: 4 out of 5

This book is available from Harper Teen. You can purchase it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.