The Taker by J.M. Steele

Carly Biels has a pretty good life. Her boyfriend is the man at school, she's got great friends, and with her good grades and her dad's status as a Princeton alumni, she's sure to go to Princeton. That is, until she gets her SAT results. She completely tanked the test that was going to get her into Princeton, and now she'll do anything to increase her scores. So when she gets a mysterious text from "The Taker" who guarantees he can get her within 150 points of perfect on her SATs, she immediately agrees. But in order to avoid suspicion, she still needs to study. So she gets a tutor: the unbearably geeky Ronald Gross (rhymes with floss), who just so happens to completely love her. During their tutoring sessions, she realizes that Ronald isn't who she thought and he's making her smarter with every session. Her new opinions of Ronald only hurt her relationship with her boyfriend and her new brains make her no longer need the Taker. But when she can't contact the Taker to call off the deal, her many worries only increase.

Review:

I really thought I'd hate reading this because it is all about tests and school and right now tests and school aren't high on my "thing I enjoy" list. But thankfully, I really did like the book. It was happy-making. The plot moves along nicely and quickly and is full of twists and turns. It never dragged and occasionally something would pop up that completely changed my thoughts on who the Taker might be. Carly's problems are realistic and dealt with humorously, making the book a truly enjoyable read. The characters are well developed and thankfully not big stereotypes. It'd be really easy to stereotype the sweet nerd and the horrible jock boyfriend, but none of the characters were stereotypes once you got to dig deeper into their personalities. They add a lot to the story: humor, mystery, and some cheesy but cute romance.

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That's the shortest review I have ever written. Wow. Even I'm surprised at how short that is (even though I didn't say much, making it a little blah, but whatever). I guess I should do some more of these Book Divas review more often.