I was skeptical of That Boy going in, not because the premise is unappealing, but because friends-to-lovers YA romance is one of the most heavily trafficked territories in contemporary fiction, and it takes something specific about execution to make a story feel fresh within such familiar coordinates. Jillian Dodd mostly manages it, and the reason has everything to do with JJ, the narrator-protagonist who spends the book oscillating between two boys who have loved her since childhood.
I listened to a significant portion of this on a Sunday afternoon, the kind of easy day when you want something that will move quickly without demanding emotional labor. That Boy delivered that, and then, in the final hour, it asked for something more.
Where This One Lands
The book spans a substantial portion of JJ's life, from childhood into early adulthood, and that timeline is one of its structural advantages. We watch Danny and Phillip grow alongside JJ rather than arriving fully formed as love interests, which gives the eventual romantic tension genuine stakes. The choice the book builds toward is not between two archetypes but between two people the reader has come to know as fully as JJ knows them, which is a harder thing to achieve than Dodd makes it look.
Danny is the golden-boy quarterback, all charisma and adventure; Phillip is the reliable, perceptive presence who can read JJ's moods and always seems to know what she needs before she does. The synopsis makes this sound like a familiar triangle, but the book complicates that structure by making clear that JJ genuinely loves both of them and that the reader's investment in her choice is not about rooting for a team but about understanding what she wants her life to be.
Lisa Cordileone's narration is well-matched to the material. She gives JJ a naturalness that makes the introspective passages feel like genuine thought rather than performed reflection, and her handling of the comedic moments, particularly the scrapes and misadventures that define JJ and Danny's dynamic, has the right timing. The 9-hour and 15-minute runtime covers a lot of territory, and Cordileone keeps the energy consistent without forcing it.
Dodd's voice is light without being shallow. One reviewer described the book as a perfect fluffy read, which is accurate as a mood designation but slightly undersells the emotional intelligence in the later chapters. The line one reviewer quoted, about wanting to stay with someone more than you wanted to rescue someone else, is the kind of observation that sounds like a rom-com quip until you realize it has actually clarified something.
What to Watch For in That Boy
This is the first book in a series, and while it resolves its central romantic question, the narrative clearly has more story to tell. Listeners who come in hoping for a clean standalone will find the ending satisfying but open, which is appropriate for the format. Those who prefer complete standalone stories should know they are boarding a series rather than picking up a single book.
The book has attracted a devoted international readership, reviews in Italian and other languages reflect a following that extends well beyond the YA romance market's typical demographic, and those enthusiastic readers are not wrong about its warmth. What they are responding to is Dodd's ability to make JJ someone you genuinely like spending time with, which is rarer than it sounds and harder to achieve than technical plot craft.
Recommended For
Readers who love friends-to-lovers romance told across a long timeline, with humor and heart in roughly equal measure, will find this hits its targets reliably. Those who prefer high dramatic stakes, complex secondary characters, or realistic portrayals of high school social dynamics may find the book too comfortable. At its best, That Boy delivers exactly what it promises: the feeling of watching two people figure out that the person they were looking for was next to them the whole time.
