The Manic Pixie Dream Boy Improvement Project

Lenore Appelhans

Mar 2019 · Carolrhoda Lab ®

About this ebook

Riley lives in TropeTown, where everyone plays stock roles in novels. Riley, a Manic Pixie Dream Boy, is sent to group therapy after going off-script. Riley knows that breaking the rules again could get him terminated, yet he feels there must be more to life than recycling the same clichés for readers' entertainment. Then he meets Zelda, a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (Geek Chic subtype), and falls head over heels in love. Zelda's in therapy too, along with several other Manic Pixies. But TropeTown has a dark secret, and if Riley and his fellow Manic Pixies don't get to the bottom of it, they may all be terminated.

Ratings and reviews

3.5 stars — I had a hard time getting sucked into this story, because I didn’t understand its purpose, or what it was trying to achieve, and so I held myself back from connecting with it. I’m kind of impatient like that. I think I was confused if this was going to be a romance, because it was very odd in the romance department and was kind of failing. I think if I’d known beforehand that it wasn’t a romance, but rather just had romance elements, I would have had an easier time. The story really is about the journey of Riley as he discovers himself and his world and what he wants for his life…just in a super strange world. It was definitely very cleverly written. I appreciated all the little nods here and there to different tropes, how tropes can be misused, what they bring to a story, all sorts of different views. I loved the overall message of depth and uniqueness and how we’re all trying to figure out who we want to be, but especially teenagers. Like I said, it was very smart about a lot of things — using the tropes, but also stepping outside of those boundaries at times. Riley was pretty easy to like, even if I didn’t always quite understand who he was or his motivations…I guess he didn’t either. Truthfully, I’m not all that familiar with this level of trope, and what exactly a Manic Pixie Dream Girl/Boy is. I figured it out through context, but it made me sit back and think about what characters *I* know from books I’ve read that would fit that description…and I’m still not sure. Like I said, the romance left me feeling kind of cold, because I didn’t understand what drew him to Zelda or Ava. I believed in his crush, but I kept expecting development that didn’t happen. I was frustrated with Zelda’s mixed messages too. So I highly recommend going into this story knowing that it’s not a romance, and I think you’ll be much happier. Another thing I think made this a more…confusing read is how it jumped all over the place, especially near the beginning. I was having a hard time getting a grasp on certain things, and then it felt like the story would go off on tangents…so, for me, it was hard to determine the theme. In the end I definitely enjoyed myself, and I actually really LOVED where the story ended up and the messages it had for the reader. I’m a huge proponent of depth, uniqueness and diversity, so it wasn’t hard for me to fall in love with those messages. Before the ending, I might have rated this a 3 (or at least rounded down to a 3), but it really leveled up the story for me. It’s always nice when a book ends on a high!

About the author

Lenore Appelhans is the author of several books for children and teens. Her work has appeared on the Bank Street Best Books list, won a SCBWI Crystal Kite award, and been featured on boxes of Cheerios. Lenore is an ambivert, a proud Slytherpuff, and a world traveler. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in the D.C. area with her family and her manic pixie dream cat.