Call Your Boyfriend by Olivia A. Cole & Ashley Woodfolk: Review

Welcome to my review of Call Your Boyfriend by Olivia A. Cole & Ashley Woodfolk! I love Ashley’s writing, so I was very excited to read this co-authored work.

Title: Call Your Boyfriend
Authors: Olivia A. Cole & Ashley Woodfolk
Genre: YA Rom-Com
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Pub Date: 07/01/25

Description

She Gets the Girl meets Bottoms in this fun and flirty young adult sapphic rom-com about two teens who want revenge on the flaky popular girl they’re both crushing on.

Cynical but sensitive Beau Carl is on a mission. She needs to know if ultra-popular Maia Moon—the girl she’s been secretly hooking up with for months—really has feelings for her. But when she shows up at the last big party of the year before prom, she sees Maia about to kiss someone else.

Sweet, inexperienced Charm Montgomery is the “someone else.” And she’s ecstatic that she’s been reading Maia’s flirty behavior in their tutoring sessions correctly. But when the kiss is interrupted and Maia accepts an elaborate promposal from her douchey, popular boyfriend just a few days later, both Charm and Beau end up heartbroken.

There’s only one thing for them to do—get her back. And the only way to do that is for Beau to tutor Charm on how she can get their former crush to fall for her so hard that Maia will dump her ex…and then get dumped for once.

As their plan starts working, Beau and Charm grow closer too, in a way neither expected. But are either of them ready to let go of their scheme to take a chance on something a little sweeter—and scarier—than revenge?

Review

I’m pleased to announce that Call Your Boyfriend was such a fun romp. If you’re looking for a Sapphic John Tucker Must Die, this will scratch that itch. And while I haven’t seen Bottoms, this book definitely made me want to check it out. I’m always a huge fan scheming, especially when you know it’s not going to go as the characters think it will. Charm and Beau have a plan and ground rules, but of course, nothing is ever that neat and easy when actually implemented.

While this book had a fun premise, it got a lot deeper than I expected. I really enjoyed the conversation around figuring yourself and your identity out, and the ethics around involving other people in that process. Was Maia a villain or a victim? Does she deserve acceptance? All good questions that I think readers were made to sit with and decide for themselves. Being a hot mess as a teenager is also a right of passage, and I think this book did a good job of highlighting that these characters weren’t supposed to know everything and make the right decisions every time. I’ve seen people say they loved Charm a lot more than Beau, but emotionally avoidant characters are kind of my jam, so I really liked seeing Beau struggle when she’s the “expert.”

Overall, this is a good one, especially if you like characters trying not to fall for each other. I needed an epilogue badly though because I was not ready for the book to be over.

*Thank you to the publisher for the finished copy. All opinions are my own.*

Authors

Credit: Aisha Asada

Olivia A. Cole is the author of ten books, including Dear Medusa, Ariel Crashes a Train, and The Truth About White Lies for young adults, and Where the Lockwood Grows and The Empty Place for younger readers. A Los Angeles Times Book Prize nominee, Olivia lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where writing and parenting keep life very interesting.

Ashley Woodfolk has loved reading and writing for as long as she can remember. She started reading at age five, writing poetry and stories at age seven, and after majoring in English in college, worked in children’s book publishing for over a decade. Now a full-time mom and writer, Ashley lives in a sunny Brooklyn apartment with her cute husband, her cuter dog, and the cutest kids in the world, and she spends her days (and nights) writing. She is the author of ten books, including The Beauty That Remains, When You Were Everything, Blackout, Nothing Burns as Bright as You, and the Flyy Girls series.