51 pages • 1 hour read
Freida McFaddenThe Boyfriend
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Cynch
Throughout the novel, the fictional dating app Cynch appears as a recurring motif related to the theme of Navigating Misogyny and Safety Risks in the Dating World. Although Sydney describes Cynch as “the most popular dating app the city,” the novel emphasizes the app as a tool used by predatory characters to monitor and stalk victims. Sydney twice complains about the number of “bad dates” (3, 97) that she’s had through the app and approaches her meetups cautiously, refusing alcohol so as not “to impair [her] judgment in any way” (6). Her date with Kevin in the novel’s opening chapters demonstrates the need for such caution.
Freida McFadden suggests that dating apps facilitate duplicity and access to its users regardless of consent. After the attempted assault on their first date, Sydney blocks Kevin on the app, believing that “he has no way of contacting [her] again” (12). She also plans to “report him to the admins since they have all his personal information” and can keep him from harming other women (18). However, Kevin is able to immediately make another profile and search for Sydney directly. Sydney is horrified by this lack of protections, and she begins to fear that “half the guys on Cynch are just Kevin in disguise” (65). The obvious safety concerns with Cynch evidence the larger presence of misogyny and predatory behavior in the dating world.
Bonnie’s Scrunchie
Bonnie’s scrunchie acts as a symbol of individuality in the face of anonymity on dating apps. Bonnie’s death represents the inciting incident that sets the action of the novel in motion. Before her death, Bonnie’s signature accessory is a scrunchie, a fabric-covered hair-tie that has emerged as a fad multiple times since the 1980s. Sydney believes that Bonnie is “the only grown woman in the twenty-first century who wears scrunchies […] her signature” style element (34). Mentions of scrunchies appear in every scene featuring Bonnie: She wears a “purple scrunchie that matches her top” (34), a “green scrunchie” (43), and “black scrunchie” (69) before her death. The association continues even after her death, as Sydney spends the next day “wearing a scrunchie and eating mint chocolate chip ice cream in her honor” (95). At the funeral, Sydney wants to confirm that “whoever dressed her made sure to put a scrunchie in her hair” (117).
McFadden uses Sydney’s discovery of a scrunchie in Tom’s apartment to catalyze the reveal that Tom was Bonnie’s doctor crush, placing Sydney in immediate danger and raising the stakes of the plot. Although Tom dismisses the relationship as casual, Sydney’s attachment to the scrunchie affirms her late friend’s feelings and importance as an individual. The scrunchie ultimately acts as a kind of touchstone to reality for Sydney. Rather than accepting Tom’s excuses and explanations, Sydney begins to trust her own instincts, taking action to the learn the truth by stealing Tom’s water bottle, escaping the apartment, and delivering it to the police.
Tom and Daisy Buchanan
Tom and Daisy Buchanan are key figures in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby. Wealthy yet lacking any sense of responsibility, Tom and Daisy are able to navigate life completely detached from the consequences of their actions. The prestige and privilege of Tom’s family wealth protects him from the consequences of his actions in his business and personal dealings. Daisy’s delicate, ethereal beauty disguises the shallowness of her personality and her self-centered nature. Tom and Daisy are both unfaithful in their marriage, but when tragedy strikes they come back together to form a united front. Ultimately, narrator Nick Carraway describes Tom and Daisy as “careless people” who “smash up things” and let other people clean up their mess.
In The Boyfriend, Tom Brewer and Gretchen/Daisy offer an eerie echo of the Buchanans. Like Daisy Buchanan, Gretchen/Daisy is described as an ethereal beauty. She takes advantage of that beauty to hide her many crimes. Tom Brewer uses the prestige of his career as a doctor to disguise the violence of his nature in the same way that Tom Buchanan’s wealth masks his brutality. The arc of Tom and Daisy’s romance in The Boyfriend also echoes the Buchanan’s arc in The Great Gatsby: Both couples begin their novels as a pair, spend time with other romantic partners, and end the novel by running away together. McFadden’s use of Tom and Daisy Buchanan as a model for her central romantic pairing helps to reinforce the idea of Tom Brewer and Gretchen/Daisy as soulmates. It also evokes the violence inherent to the Buchanans’ relationship in The Great Gatsby.
Related Titles
By Freida McFadden
