Customer Reviews

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

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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

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.

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!

The third installment in Natalie Standiford's Dating Game series, CAN TRUE LOVE SURVIVE HIGH SCHOOL?, keeps the story of Holly, Madison and Lina moving and also fleshes out several minor characters from the previous books.

Holly has a new project, which is to find her pal Britta a boyfriend so that Britta realizes there is more to life than just school. Madison is still dating her artist boyfriend, Stephen, while continuing to moon over Sean in a subtle manner. And Lina still has a serious crush on her teacher, Dan.

All three girls seem to mature as the book progresses, which makes them better people and more likable characters. Britta can be a bit annoying at times, but this can be chalked up to her isolated existence; she now is beginning a serious relationship with a foreign boy and contemplating elopement. Holly's older sister invites Holly and her friends to spend a weekend at college with her, giving the girls a sneak peak at what life after high school might be like. Madison's mother has written an autobiographical play that is being produced, and she wants Madison and her younger sister to portray her in it. Madison is not thrilled, to say the least. Lina hopes to start something with Dan at a party, but begins to realize that perhaps he is not the best choice for a teenage girl.

As with the first two installments, Standiford's strengths are her characters and humor. Readers will be able to relate to Holly, Madison and Lina, and the situations in which they find themselves. This series continues to be a humorous and realistic look at life in high school.

--- Reviewed by Melissa A. Palmer ([...])