Point of View

The Boyfriend List is told in the first-person and limited yet omniscient perspective from fifteen-year-old Ruby Oliver's perspective. Ruby writes using "me" and "I" and that the only character whose thoughts the reader has access to are Ruby's alone. The reader is held very close to Ruby's emotions and thoughts, as these are the most important factors to understanding the novel as a whole. Because the reader is held so close to Ruby the point-of-view is completely reliable. As Ruby is struggling to understand what is happening to her, she has no reason to manipulate the circumstances for her own personal gain. She embraces Doctor Z's assignment - the boyfriend list - wholeheartedly and writes about her romantic experiences with abandon. Although it's difficult for her to identify exactly what went wrong, when, she expresses her emotions freely in her diary, certainly more freely than she...