The Boyfriend

Throughout The Boyfriend, Freida McFadden depicts the dating world as a dangerous place for heterosexual women. Although the novel’s killer is ultimately revealed to be a woman, nearly all of the men in the novel are a threat to the women who date them. The novel explores the idea that dating in an online landscape creates a unique set of risks for women who date men, often leaving them vulnerable to violence and misogyny. McFadden begins the novel’s opening chapter with a date between Sydney and Kevin, a man she met on a dating app who attempts to sexually assault her by the end of the date. McFadden opens the scene by emphasizing the stark differences between Kevin’s profile pictures and his appearance in person, underscoring the opportunity for deceit in online dating. Kevin embodies a misogynistic worldview in which men feel entitled to women’s bodies, telling Sydney that she’s “never going to land a husband if [she] won’t even kiss a guy on a date” (14). Even after Sydney explicitly threatens to report him to police, Kevin continues to stalk her, claiming that “it’s not right that [he] only get to see [her] through a window” (263).