A creative seventh grader Kara McAllister just had her best idea yet. She’s going to take notes on all of the boys in her grade in order to answer a very serious question, How can she get a boyfriend? But Kara’s project turns out to be a lot more complicated than she imagined. Soon there are secrets, lies, and an embarrassing incident and has to deal with mean girls. Kara’s witty notes got me hooked! Although the extras were fun, the actual story lacked what I wanted. It was a cute book. There were a few good moments. It’s perfectly okay to have a crush, and many people make a living studying relationships, but Kara was REALLY boy-obsessed, especially for her age. As the book went on she grew as a person and matured, and I liked her more towards the end, but she was not the best main character I have ever seen. The plot fell flat for me. There were some very funny moments but it was kind of all over the place. It was difficult to keep track of every boy she observed, and when Kara brought them up later in the book, I was thinking of one boy when it was someone totally different! Many of the characters could have used some more information or development. The Boy Project didn’t really work for me, but I can see fans of Dork Diaries and The Popularity Papers reading it. ( )

This was cute. Fluffy and insubstantial but cute. Kara is stressed over not having a boyfriend when it seems like everyone else does. I can remember being that age (12) and that was a big deal. On the whole though it wasn't memorable hence the rating. ( )

Whimsical novel about a girl on a quest to get a boyfriend... and an A on her science project at the same time. This whole book is written with charts, graphs, notecards, and she is conducting the scientific method studying boys and girls behavior and what they want in a relationship by observation, and of course she learned a lot about herself on the way.
Even done in this style, we still get a good feel for Kara as well as her best friend Tabbs. They have been friends forever, and I love how their friendship is. Kara has to learn a bit about loyalty though, and she does such a job at swallowing her pain to support her friend, because she knew that friendship should come before any boy. Though I don't understand how she couldn't have been more open with Tabb in the first place and then the pain wouldn't have been there... But I guess that I have been the quieter person in a friendship before, so...
The flirting is all really cute, and I approve of how she was finally successful in her experiment and the other friendships and maybe more that she gained by the experiment.
Though it attempted to put in a few other things that she was interested in--crafting and having good grades... Kara was way more boy obsessed than I think was necessary Maybe it was just because the book was like a journal for the project, but still it talked about other things when not exactly relevant to the experiment, so, I don't know.
But I must say that I loved how present and involved her parents were, and even the teachers. Usually in YA the teachers are just there as almost a prop, but not so for Kara. I also loved the bonding moments with her sister Julie. There was also the bickering and eye rolling, but that just made it authentic for me.
Bottom Line: Fun way to spend a few hours.