Her new friends are fascinated, taking Mary's advice about the boys in school as she compares them to men in those novels and labels them accordingly which becomes compiled into the Scoundrel Survival Guide. Starting public high school after being in a small private school on campus, she has to find new friends which she does by using her extensive knowledge of 19th-century classic books. Mary Porter-Malcolm is the bookish middle child of two college professors. Chapter 42: Connect with HMH on Social Media.Chapter 38: The Scoundrel Survival Guide, Appendix I: Works Cited.

Without a convenient rain-swept moor to flee to, Mary is forced to admit that real life doesn’t follow the same rules as fiction and that if she wants a happy ending, she’s going to have to write it hers. But despite her best efforts, she soon finds herself unable to listen to her own good advice and falling for a supposed cad-the same one she warned her friends away from. When some new friends seem in danger of falling for the same tricks employed since the days of Austen and Tolstoy, Mary swoops in to create the Scoundrel Survival Guide, using archetypes of literature’s debonair bad boys to signal red flags. Mary Porter-Malcolm has prepared for high school in the one way she knows how: an extensive review of classic literature to help navigate the friendships, romantic liaisons, and overall drama she has come to expect from such an “esteemed” institution. In this clever YA rom-com debut perfect for fans of Kasie West and Ashley Poston, a teen obsessed with nineteenth-century literature tries to cull advice on life and love from her favorite classic heroines to disastrous results-especially when she falls for the school’s resident Lothario.

By the book amanda sellet