I Speak Boy by Jessica Brody
(2021) 368 pages

Final Rating: 7/10

Blurb:
After a matchmaking attempt for her best friend, Harper, goes wrong, Emmy is fed up. Why are boys so hard to figure out? But then something amazing happens–she wakes up with a new app on her phone: iSpeak Boy! Suddenly Emmy has the information every girl wants to know–the super-secret knowledge of how boys think . . . and who they like!

Now Emmy is using her magical app to make matches left and right. But can she use it to help Harper, the only person who doesn’t seem to buy into Emmy’s “gift”? And when her secret gets out and the app ends up in the wrong hands, can Emmy figure out how to undo the damage she’s caused?

Review:
Boys are complicated. I’ve dealt with enough boys in my life to know that. That’s why iSpeak Boy is perfect for a phone-obsessed, totally romantic girl named Emmy.

At first, Emmy was not my cup of tea. Although I’m also a romantic person, who has embarrassingly also tried matchmaking with my friends as well, I found Emmy to be immature and a bit too addicted to her phone, even as a seventh grader. Regardless of how she was at the beginning of the book, I believe she matured at the end and learned valuable lessons on how to be a better friend and a better person.

I think having a power such as being capable of knowing information that would rather be kept private can be devastating to many people if used wrongly. And Emmy, being the person that she is, uses it however she wants, making so many mistakes along the way to a point where it is overwhelming. Despite that, I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would, perhaps because I’ve always been interested in mindreading. 

Overall, the concept was very cute and fun to read, but it didn’t make any lasting impact on me.