That Boy by Jillian Dodd ♡♡

That Boy by Jillian Dodd has been coming up on my Goodreads recommendations since the time I started reading New Adult. BookBub emailed me a deal, and I decided to give it a shot. The book is about 4 years old, so the whole series is out (or at least it seems to be).

That Boy is about a girl named Jadyn and growing up with her two best friends, Phillip and Danny. When I say growing up, I mean it. The story takes place from elementary school all the way to after college graduation. And we watch Jadyn's life unfold through ups and downs and lots of boys. Even time where she might be into her best friends.

I thought, when I started, that the book would highlight some of Jadyn's younger years and then skip to college pretty quickly, but college was a small part of the story, which was disappointing. It felt to me that there was too much time spent in the younger years.

The story says it's contemporary romance (which makes its recommendation under new adult frustrating), but it felt more like a young adult title. There was some cursing, but in quite a few places it was bleeped out with symbols, and the narrator doesn't talk about sex because she says she's polite. So the book felt like it was a book to read between YA and NA, with a big emphasis on growing up, but leaving out most of the mature content.

The voice of the narrator didn't change much throughout the story, something I thought should have happened as we watch her go from a child to a working professional.

There were also a few things I would have liked more details about. The story works too hard to set up who she would be with. But skipped over the whole relationship of the other person, the guy who was actually interesting. He ended up with someone else and we don't get to see how Jadyn feels when he starts to get serious or the ways that changes their relationship, even though they had something going on between them for quite some time. All of a sudden he's getting married to some other girl, and we don't get to see how things might change for Jadyn in that situation.

Overall, I wanted to see more from this story. I think there was a lot that could have been done that was instead used to show us most of Jadyn's life in small snippets. I would have preferred a story about her adult life. It's not likely I will continue on with this series.

What do you think? Have you read this series? Let me know what you think in the comments!

That Boy on Goodreads