I really loved this one. The last line still runs through my head on a daily basis, and it's been months since I read it.
I wound up DNFing this one... I just really dislike YA that makes teenage girls the bad guys.
Willaful, which girl did you feel was made out to be the bad guy? Alice? Or Tim's one-night-stand?
The one-night stand. She's not maternal enough. She's a liar. Everything she likes is wrong. It really bugged me. Especially the lying, because it's so hard for girls to be believed -- we don't need more stories like that.
Also, I didn't see anything in Tim's relationship to Alice that wasn't about how hot she is. Maybe that improved, but why would she even be interested in him to begin with?
I hear you, Willaful, about the girls and lying thing. I usually reject such portrayals, if they cast the girl as the evil other to the good girl heroine. In this book, though, the girl is not made out to be a flatly evil other "woman"; she's presented as a rounded character, with her own personality and reasons for doing what she did. And we have sympathy both for her and for Tim by book's end.
You're right, at first Tim is definitely attracted to Alice mostly because he thinks she's hot. I think she was interested in him at first because she saw him as someone else to mother/to boss around! So yeah, not the best foundation for a budding romance. What I enjoyed was watching the two grow out of their initial shallow or misguided reasons for being interested in the other, and really connect.