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The Romance Diaries: Ruby
Ruby's worried that her friends keep making the same mistakes when it comes to romance. Then she develops a theory: most girls go for either a 'Jane Austen' guy (funny, sweet, caring) or a 'Jane Eyre' guy (dark, brooding, serious) -- when really they should be dating the exact opposite!
But when Ruby puts her theory into practice, the results don’t exactly go to plan ... And if she’s so smart about love, how come she can’t figure out who’s been sending her all the flirty emails and flowers?
But when Ruby puts her theory into practice, the results don’t exactly go to plan ... And if she’s so smart about love, how come she can’t figure out who’s been sending her all the flirty emails and flowers?
- GenresRomance
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
4 people are currently reading
30 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 12, 2012
This was loads of fun :) Only I was a little surprised when I learned that the main group of girls are all in year 11, because they read quite a bit younger than that, I was guessing about year 8! But then when I think about it, I think they were actually quite realistic as real year 11 girls, it's just that a lot of books seem to make characters read a lot older than they actually are. So this was seriously refreshing in that regard!
Ruby, the narrator, was seriously awesome. The book is her diary, and it really sounds like the rambly, sometimes over-enthusiastic diary of a teenager. Zounds! The writing is easy and fast to read, full of (Aussie!) slang, there are lots of Capitals to Emphasise Important Things, and lots of hyperactive run-on sentences which suddenly end in ALL CAPS BECAUSE OM TO THE G.
Ruby is a little match-maker, who likes sticking her nose into everyone else's business, and who thinks some things through *really* thoroughly, while other things she doesn't think through at all. She's a lovely character, just so full of energy and sunshine! And she's a huge reader too, yay :D
Definitely worth a read if you want something light and fluffy that will make you giggle out loud a ton :)
Ruby, the narrator, was seriously awesome. The book is her diary, and it really sounds like the rambly, sometimes over-enthusiastic diary of a teenager. Zounds! The writing is easy and fast to read, full of (Aussie!) slang, there are lots of Capitals to Emphasise Important Things, and lots of hyperactive run-on sentences which suddenly end in ALL CAPS BECAUSE OM TO THE G.
Ruby is a little match-maker, who likes sticking her nose into everyone else's business, and who thinks some things through *really* thoroughly, while other things she doesn't think through at all. She's a lovely character, just so full of energy and sunshine! And she's a huge reader too, yay :D
Definitely worth a read if you want something light and fluffy that will make you giggle out loud a ton :)
November 27, 2025
The Romance Diaries: Ruby is the first book in the series, told entirely through Ruby’s diary entries. Ruby is a Year 11 student who decides to take matchmaking into her own hands after watching her best friend Bella repeatedly fall for the wrong boys. Ruby decides to intervene in the romantic affairs of her three best friends as well as her mother and her sister.
Jenna Austen is a pseudonym; the author’s real name is Sophie Masson. She is an award winning author who has also published books under the name of Isabelle Merlin. This is her first novel I have read. This book was published in Australia and I loved that all the terminology and “culture” felt subtle, but authentically Australian.
This book is fun, engaging and entertaining. I’ve often found this to be the case for stories written in diary format. It was easy to read in long sittings and did not bore me at any point. However, the teen slang is downright ridiculous and over the top. At times, it reads like an older adult trying to impersonate a teenager.
Here’s some examples:
•Totes
•As per
•Pig off
•Pig it
•Pigged up
•Pigwit
•Zounds!
•Peems (instead of PMS)
•Ditts
Fortunately, the overall quality of the story makes it easier overlook and eventually the writing style became part of the book’s charm.
Ruby is intentionally written as a young and inexperienced - dare I say it - flawed narrator. She has low self esteem, labelling herself as “ordinary” and “the reliable sidekick”. She often jumps to conclusions and catastrophises, but we follow her as she processes new information, learns and grows. Ruby’s actions stem from good intentions and wanting what’s best for the people she loves.
I liked the way Sophie illustrated emotional realism. The writing conveys that Ruby feels her emotions strongly which clearly shapes her behaviour. As someone who also kept a diary as a teen, I found Ruby’s reflections to be very relatable. I loved how she would begin a new entry by looking back on the previous one, cringing and adjusting her thoughts or realizing she’d overreacted. I used to do the same thing.
Although brief, I really enjoyed reading about Ruby working in a bookstore.
There’s a meaningful message at the end about letting people make their own choices and not over-involving yourself in others’ lives in a controlling way. This was ironic as I am also currently reading The Let Them Theory which covers the same theme.
I was really pleased with the ending. It was mostly realistic, thorough and satisfying. No stone was left unturned. It made me smile.
I’m surprised to see so many reviewers give this book three stars. It deserves more - at least four. It’s important to remember the intended audience is tweens or younger teens. If you read it as an adult, of course it won’t feel as deep or relatable as adult romance. That said, while it isn’t one of my personal favourites and I’m not sure I’d reread it, it’s objectively a great story for its target audience and very well suited to younger readers.
Jenna Austen is a pseudonym; the author’s real name is Sophie Masson. She is an award winning author who has also published books under the name of Isabelle Merlin. This is her first novel I have read. This book was published in Australia and I loved that all the terminology and “culture” felt subtle, but authentically Australian.
This book is fun, engaging and entertaining. I’ve often found this to be the case for stories written in diary format. It was easy to read in long sittings and did not bore me at any point. However, the teen slang is downright ridiculous and over the top. At times, it reads like an older adult trying to impersonate a teenager.
Here’s some examples:
•Totes
•As per
•Pig off
•Pig it
•Pigged up
•Pigwit
•Zounds!
•Peems (instead of PMS)
•Ditts
Fortunately, the overall quality of the story makes it easier overlook and eventually the writing style became part of the book’s charm.
Ruby is intentionally written as a young and inexperienced - dare I say it - flawed narrator. She has low self esteem, labelling herself as “ordinary” and “the reliable sidekick”. She often jumps to conclusions and catastrophises, but we follow her as she processes new information, learns and grows. Ruby’s actions stem from good intentions and wanting what’s best for the people she loves.
I liked the way Sophie illustrated emotional realism. The writing conveys that Ruby feels her emotions strongly which clearly shapes her behaviour. As someone who also kept a diary as a teen, I found Ruby’s reflections to be very relatable. I loved how she would begin a new entry by looking back on the previous one, cringing and adjusting her thoughts or realizing she’d overreacted. I used to do the same thing.
Although brief, I really enjoyed reading about Ruby working in a bookstore.
There’s a meaningful message at the end about letting people make their own choices and not over-involving yourself in others’ lives in a controlling way. This was ironic as I am also currently reading The Let Them Theory which covers the same theme.
I was really pleased with the ending. It was mostly realistic, thorough and satisfying. No stone was left unturned. It made me smile.
I’m surprised to see so many reviewers give this book three stars. It deserves more - at least four. It’s important to remember the intended audience is tweens or younger teens. If you read it as an adult, of course it won’t feel as deep or relatable as adult romance. That said, while it isn’t one of my personal favourites and I’m not sure I’d reread it, it’s objectively a great story for its target audience and very well suited to younger readers.
March 4, 2013
Only after finishing this book did I realise it was like the Clueless re-make of Jane Austen's Emma, for younger readers. However, it's much more Meg Cabot than Jane Austen... a sweetened, less substantial Meg Cabot with less developed characters and less complex dramas. Did I mention it was sweet? The warm, fuzzy feelings are almost overwhelming.
Loosely based on Austen's Emma the framework is unobjectionable, but the whole story is spun into fairy floss. The nice but ordinary-looking Ruby is too busy matchmaking her friends to think of romance for herself; she's the side-kick friend rather than the leading lady. But, of course, her romantic counterpart thinks differently.
It's nice that she's a bookish, less than glamorous protagonist, but she is rather obsessed with romance. There's barely an entry in her diary that doesn't refer to somebody's love-life. The author, Jenna Austen, tells readers that she's not, sadly, related to Jane Austen, but that she adores a good romance and doesn't mind if readers want to call her 'Jane Austen's Little Sister'. Yet compared to the earlier Austen's subtle, nuanced social commentaries The Romance Diaries: Ruby is a younger and (at least for now) more innocent Mills and Boon.
There's nothing overtly objectionable, just a lot of teenage romance plotting, a good amount of serious teenage kissing, and some comically 'swoony' love-talk coming from a teenage male. But I do think it's less likely to foster an interest in Jane Austen than to fuel a teen/tween obsession with romance.
I did wonder: if this is supposed to appeal to the 'serious', 'bookish' girls... I hate to think what's on offer for the 'romantics'. Reviewed for www.GoodReadingGuide.com
Loosely based on Austen's Emma the framework is unobjectionable, but the whole story is spun into fairy floss. The nice but ordinary-looking Ruby is too busy matchmaking her friends to think of romance for herself; she's the side-kick friend rather than the leading lady. But, of course, her romantic counterpart thinks differently.
It's nice that she's a bookish, less than glamorous protagonist, but she is rather obsessed with romance. There's barely an entry in her diary that doesn't refer to somebody's love-life. The author, Jenna Austen, tells readers that she's not, sadly, related to Jane Austen, but that she adores a good romance and doesn't mind if readers want to call her 'Jane Austen's Little Sister'. Yet compared to the earlier Austen's subtle, nuanced social commentaries The Romance Diaries: Ruby is a younger and (at least for now) more innocent Mills and Boon.
There's nothing overtly objectionable, just a lot of teenage romance plotting, a good amount of serious teenage kissing, and some comically 'swoony' love-talk coming from a teenage male. But I do think it's less likely to foster an interest in Jane Austen than to fuel a teen/tween obsession with romance.
I did wonder: if this is supposed to appeal to the 'serious', 'bookish' girls... I hate to think what's on offer for the 'romantics'. Reviewed for www.GoodReadingGuide.com
December 31, 2017
This was a cute read that had more substance to it than I was expecting so it ended up being a pleasant surprise. I recommend it if you are looking for a quick YA read.
April 19, 2020
About a girl trying to find a theory of what type of people her friends like. She sets them up and she sets up her friend with will. She starts to get jealous of her friend.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 17, 2013
The Romance Diaries: Ruby is from a series of novels written by Sophie Masson, who uses the pen name Jenna Austen. Austen likes to envisage herself as "Jane Austen's Little Sister" and this admiration and desire to follow in the same footsteps as Jane Austen is overwhelmingly apparent throughout the entirety of the text.
This book relies heavily of the readers prior knowledge of Twilight (Stephenie Myer, 2005), Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte, 1847) and various works by Jane Austen, including Emma and Meg Cabot, in order to imagine and understand the entire book. While the storyline is solid and relevant to today's high school girls, the author has tried too hard in "keeping it relevant for today's teenagers, or something gross" (p. 19) and has taken away from the flow of the text by using unnecessary acronyms, made up words and shortened versions of words, such as "totes" instead of the word 'totally' at every opportunity. The frequency of such wording ruins the flow of the text on multiple occasions as well as the atmosphere that Austen has worked so hard to create. The emphasis that is put on words destroys their grammatical correctness and diverts the reader's attention from the story line to trying to make sense of the sentence through the incorrect use of capital letters and full stops.
The protagonist, high school student Ruby May, likes to identify as being a matchmaker. She uses a compilation of Jane Austen's characters and story lines, in combination with the novel Jane Eyre to express her beliefs on love and relationships. Throughout the duration of the text, these beliefs and the likening of them to the two Janes' act as the main basis for the story line and are otherwise undefined in the author's own creation. Each character is compared to a personality found in either Jane Austen's texts or the novel Jane Eyre as a foundation for who they are. This severely limits the identity that Austen is able to create for her own characters and therefore the identity that she creates of herself as a writer.
The story line itself is rather compelling for a young teen romance as it flows through the realisation that what or whom you identify as, may in fact not be your true identity. It is difficult to pin point an exact age or year level of the main characters due to conflicting evidence. One of the characters is taking a gap year while the protagonist and her friends are two years below, making them in Year Eleven in most schools while reference is made to their class text ((Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen) p. 19) as being a Year Nine text (p. 100). Ruby analyses the different relationships that are occurring at this stage in Ruby's' life between her friends, their boyfriends, her mother and older sister, and the way that they develop into very different relationships within short periods of time. She categorises each of these characters into one of two groups, those who are like Jane Austen, and those who are like Jane Eyre. From this she sets out to find their perfect soul mates who she decides "the real reason people make mistakes in romance is that they imagine they're in one kind of story, but actually they're in another" (p. 20). The main focus in all of these relationships is based upon love and the feeling of love between a female and her male counterpart from the eyes of a teenage girl, with descriptions of jealousy, butterflies and excitement being occurring commonly throughout the novel.
This book relies heavily of the readers prior knowledge of Twilight (Stephenie Myer, 2005), Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte, 1847) and various works by Jane Austen, including Emma and Meg Cabot, in order to imagine and understand the entire book. While the storyline is solid and relevant to today's high school girls, the author has tried too hard in "keeping it relevant for today's teenagers, or something gross" (p. 19) and has taken away from the flow of the text by using unnecessary acronyms, made up words and shortened versions of words, such as "totes" instead of the word 'totally' at every opportunity. The frequency of such wording ruins the flow of the text on multiple occasions as well as the atmosphere that Austen has worked so hard to create. The emphasis that is put on words destroys their grammatical correctness and diverts the reader's attention from the story line to trying to make sense of the sentence through the incorrect use of capital letters and full stops.
The protagonist, high school student Ruby May, likes to identify as being a matchmaker. She uses a compilation of Jane Austen's characters and story lines, in combination with the novel Jane Eyre to express her beliefs on love and relationships. Throughout the duration of the text, these beliefs and the likening of them to the two Janes' act as the main basis for the story line and are otherwise undefined in the author's own creation. Each character is compared to a personality found in either Jane Austen's texts or the novel Jane Eyre as a foundation for who they are. This severely limits the identity that Austen is able to create for her own characters and therefore the identity that she creates of herself as a writer.
The story line itself is rather compelling for a young teen romance as it flows through the realisation that what or whom you identify as, may in fact not be your true identity. It is difficult to pin point an exact age or year level of the main characters due to conflicting evidence. One of the characters is taking a gap year while the protagonist and her friends are two years below, making them in Year Eleven in most schools while reference is made to their class text ((Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen) p. 19) as being a Year Nine text (p. 100). Ruby analyses the different relationships that are occurring at this stage in Ruby's' life between her friends, their boyfriends, her mother and older sister, and the way that they develop into very different relationships within short periods of time. She categorises each of these characters into one of two groups, those who are like Jane Austen, and those who are like Jane Eyre. From this she sets out to find their perfect soul mates who she decides "the real reason people make mistakes in romance is that they imagine they're in one kind of story, but actually they're in another" (p. 20). The main focus in all of these relationships is based upon love and the feeling of love between a female and her male counterpart from the eyes of a teenage girl, with descriptions of jealousy, butterflies and excitement being occurring commonly throughout the novel.
August 25, 2023
This book was not for me. The author used a lot of literature aspects which I struggled to get my head around. Especially the Jane Eyre quote’s as I have not read the book. Readers only get to experiences Ruby thoughts and emotions and we don’t get to really know much about her friends, except about their love life.
March 15, 2015
I really liked this book, I read it a few months ago though it has stuck in my head. This book is really funny, hart warming and sad at particular parts though I really enjoyed this book I defiantly recommend this book for people that like a bit of mystery and suspense also a lot of love!
February 17, 2014
I ADORE the princess bride references!
January 7, 2015
Enjoyable for target age group but not really a challenging read
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews