Will Mary go By the Book?

By Alaina Merchant, Panther Paw Editor

In “By the Book” by Amanda Sellet, Mary Porter-Malcom is known for thinking she’s the main character. She would get caught using bigger words that not everyone knows and is into the older types of things. She was the girl that knew all about mistakes yet she could give others advice but struggled to accept it. 

While Mary was always used to her plot staying in the same repeating cycle such as going to a small private school and hanging out with the same people, she always wanted something to thicken the plot.

It starts with her parents talking to her, gradually trying to tell her that her old school had shut down. Starting her sophomore year at Millville High shouldn’t be too bad; she has her best friend Anjuli.

Wrong, while Mary was still stuck in the olden days and staying with the same person, Anjuli got a boyfriend and ventured out and made new friends. Mary doesn’t know how to feel about this as her best friend is practically kicking her out of her life. 

After her first day back and finding out she has no one to fall on, she is watching a friend’s bookstore so he can run an errand. While cleaning the countertops, she overheard three teens she recognizes from school talking about their boy problems. Mary being herself jumps in and compares the boy to Vronsky who is a character in a novel she’s read by Anna Karenina. 

She then goes on to make a guide on how to figure out which guys you should avoid and which guys would be okay to deal with. 

From that point on she gains three new friends, and they are much more important than any boy could be, or so she thought. Everything seems to be going smoothly until she finds herself going after a type of boy she said to stay away from. 

Does she risk losing all of her friends and going against her morals for just one guy?  

This book shows how Mary grows from being almost independent with oe main friend to having many friends and even a love interest. This book grabbed my attention by gearing to a younger audience instead of being for older readers.