Dating Game #3: Can True Love Survive High School? (No. 3) [Paperback]

Natalie Standiford (Author)

Book Description

Series: Dating Game | Publication Date: August 3, 2005

Is it True Love? (Circle the correct answer.) 1. You are dating an incredible boy named Stephen. He's good-looking, sexy, kind, funny, and smart. But you can't stop fantasizing about Sean, the hottest senior in school. Are you really in love with your boyfriend? Yes or No 2. You think about your high school teacher 24/7. You plot to hide in his bedroom closet and surprise him. Are you in love or out of your mind? In Love or Delusional 3. You and your boyfriend, Rob, spend Saturday nights playing video games, sharing pizza, and hanging out with his friends. Is this love or friendship? Boyfriend or Buddy 4. You meet a guy who makes your heart race and your knees weak. You are soul mates, the perfect match, cosmically meant for each other. You decide to bail high school and run away and marry him. Are you in love or brainless? In Love or Crazy Holly, Madison, and Lina are looking for true love. But how can you tell when it's real? What is true love anyway? For the answers, open this book and read on ... because Holly, Madison, and Lina are about to run smack into the truth about love!

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 7 Up–In the third installment in the series, high school sophomores Madison, Holly, and Lina continue to dish out dating advice on and off their Web site. At a party, Madison plays matchmaker for Britta, but her machinations backfire when Britta falls madly in love with another guy. Even so, Madison accepts credit for the match and becomes the couples' confidante. In a subplot, Madison's mother coerces her into taking a part in the play she has written. Meanwhile, Lina is heartbroken to discover that the teacher she adores is moving to another city. Each chapter begins with a short and clever online daily horoscope, hinting at what lies ahead. The soap-opera elements will appeal to those looking for a romantic read. The bright purple cover with snippets of photos, the clever title, and the Web site tie-in will make the book popular, although not necessarily enough to inspire readers to seek out others in the series.–Linda L. Plevak, Saint Mary's Hall, San Antonio, TX
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

A former children's book editor at Random House and Parachute Press, Natalie Standiford is also the author of a number of children's books. She has contributed to R.L. Stine's Fear Street Series, The Blair Witch Files, and Mary-Kate and Ashley: Sweet Sixteen.

About the Packager
Parachute Publishing, the packager for this book series, is behind the phenomenal success of the Mary Kate and Ashley books as well as the Goosebumps series.

Product Details

• Paperback: 213 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (August 3, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316110426
• ISBN-13: 978-0316110426
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,532,670 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Natalie Standiford was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, but now lives in New York City. She plays bass in the rock bands Tiger Beat (featuring fellow YA writers Libba Bray, Dan Ehrenhaft, and Barney Miller) and Ruffian. Find out more at her web site: www.nataliestandiford.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars It's your choice, January 2, 2007

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Dating Game #3: Can True Love Survive High School? (No. 3) (Paperback)

Can true love survive High school, is the story about three young girls Holly, Mads, and Lina; they're best friends. Holly is a hopeless romantic who believes that she's sort of a match maker, Mads (Madison)is in love with a guy who doesn't acknowledge her exsistence, and Lina is so caught up in being in love with her teacher that she doesn't realize the potential boyfriend material in front of her. Together these friends pose the question is love something that can make it through highschool.From experience they find out the answer.
The book can true love survive high school by Natalie Standiford, was an okay book for what it was. Its the type of story most girls in juniorhigh believes is going to play out as her actual life or something similar to it when she gets to high school.One thing I like about how Natalie wrote the book is for each chapter she offered a horoscope for the character she was talking about, which foreshadowed whats going to happen next in the book. I also liked how she made an effort to make each of the characters totally different from each other, with their own (the characters) trials and tribulations.However I felt like I've read this book a million times over so nothing surprised me.Overall only the person reading the book can most best decide how they feel about the book. Ayeisha

5.0 out of 5 stars Must Read!, September 25, 2006

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Dating Game #3: Can True Love Survive High School? (No. 3) (Paperback)

Were your parents high school sweet hearts? Well that's exactly what
Britta and Ed want to be in Can True Love Survive High School? by
Natalie Standiford, the second book in The Dating Game series. In this
teen drama Madison, Holly, and Lina are best friends in high school,
and start a dating website for their school. It begins as a school
project, but everything gets a little out of hand when they attempt to
help a girl out who has never been on a date, who's name is Britta.
Thanks to their website, Britta finds her "true love" who she wants to
elope with after only knowing him for a couple weeks. Besides trying
to stop the out of control engagement, Holly must try to keep her
boyfriend, Rob, and keep up with Lina, who has a fan club for one of
her teachers. "Fan club" is a pretty loose term considering that Lina
is in love with her teacher and thinks that they should be together.
Lina takes her obsession to great lengths when she plans to hide in
his closet at a party, and surprise him after everybody has left. Can
Holly stop Britta from getting married, and will Lina and her teacher
end up together?
Although this book is fiction, it is far from unrealistic. Natalie
Standiford has done an excellent job of depicting high school, and the
many challenges one faces there. Although I did not read the first
book, The Dating Game, I still found this installment and the third,
Ex Ratings, very enticing. One of the many things I like about this
series is that you don't have to start with the first book for it to
make sense. Each book provides enough background information on the
characters so that you can pick up the last book, which I also read,
and it will still be an excellent read, as well as understandable.
This book is full of unsuspected twists and turns that just keep
adding to the excitement. For example, when you think that Britta and
her boyfriend and having a nice, normal relationship, Britta breaks
the news of her plans for marriage to Holly by saying, "He said we
should get married, the day after I met him...He said it was the only
way we could be together. And it is. I'm going to do it. I'm going to
marry him." (p.119) So, if you're a teenage girl looking for a great
page-turner, I would definitely recommend this book to you.

4.0 out of 5 stars the trouble with love is..., June 16, 2006

By 

bookworm - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dating Game #3: Can True Love Survive High School? (No. 3) (Paperback)

True loves always prevails, you just have to find it first. That's the hard part for Mads, Lina, and Holly, unfortunately. Mads' mom forces her to try out for a play that she has written, and Mads is more than happy to when she finds out that Sean's girlfriend will be in it, too. Lina is dismayed when she finds out Dan will be moving away, so she and Ramona decide to finally declare their love in a sneaky way that they will regret. Holly is back with Rob, but is sidetracked from him and her friends when she is swept up in playing matchmaker for Britta, expecially when Britta's parents refuse to let her see the guy she loves. Fun, fun, fun!