Saving Toby was a unique story about a young man who had a hard childhood and lost most of the people in his life. His mother was diagnosed with cancer and needed a caretaker, someone to assist with cooking, cleaning and helping her around the house. Claudia was a classmate of Toby's years ago and a girl that was always out of reach. As she gets closer to Mrs. Faye, Toby's mother, she also gets to know more about Toby. Toby and Claudia's story was one that was believable and even though there were character traits I did not like about each, it worked for them and their story. I really enjoyed the last 25% of the book as it really fit with the title of the book. I look forward to reading Keeping Claudia, the next book in the series. My honest opinion:So I expected this book to be pretty typical: bad boy meets sweet girl and wants to be better man, girl saves boy, boy loves girl and they live happily ever after. Cookie cutter romance book, that I've read a thousand times.This story is not that story. This is Toby SAVING Toby! Don't get me wrong the girl helps, but it was more for Toby.Toby is a good person who lived a hard life and had really bad influences; he's always been in love with Claire, he's also been invisible to her too. Claire has always been a good girl, but now she wants to be independent and stand on her own two feet, too bad she met Toby just as she's getting ready to leave.I really really worried as this story progressed about whether these two were actually going to end up together. I can usually tell that's it's a certainty but I felt for a moment that the author was sending them off to live separate lives and have separate romance stories in future books. For a tiny moment of rebellion I was about to stop reading, pretending it was losing my interest, but the story rallied and I feel it ended beautifully.There was an awful lot of character development as expected but for more than just the primary characters, I was actually surprised by that.This book surprised me and I was very happy to read it.
What do You think about Saving Toby (2000)?
Loved Toby and how his character evolved. Wasn't a fan of Claudia, so uptight! Solid 3.5.
—alicejo
Can't wait until the second boom comes out! Great job
—TylanMartin
