Review: Lola and the Boy Next Door

LOLA AND THE BOY NEXT DOOR
Stephanie Perkins
Contemporary Young Adult
338 pages
Dutton/Penguin
Available Now
Source: Bought

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Budding designer Lola Nolan doesn’t believe in fashion . . . she believes in costume. The more expressive the outfit–more sparkly, more fun, more wild–the better. But even though Lola’s style is outrageous, she’s a devoted daughter and friend with some big plans for the future. And everything is pretty perfect (right down to her hot rocker boyfriend) until the dreaded Bell twins, Calliope and Cricket, return to the neighborhood.

When Cricket–a gifted inventor–steps out from his twin sister’s shadow and back into Lola’s life, she must finally reconcile a lifetime of feelings for the boy next door.

MY THOUGHTS
Cute, quirky, and ripe with romantic tension, Lola and the Boy Next Door shows us yet again how capable Ms. Perkins is at writing relationships that have us pinging back and forth on the emotional spectrum, laughing one minute and then finding our hearts plummeting vicariously the next. While reading we can’t help but surreptitiously glance out our windows in slightly obsessive fashion, hoping that by some fortuitous circumstance a beautifully perfect-for-us boy has spontaneously relocated next door and he’s just now waiting for us to look up again to begin our dopey grin-inspiring romance. Like Anna and St. Clair before them, Lola and Cricket are characters we get a 360 degree picture of despite the flatness of the pages on which they exist, and we revel in their laughter and their drama as we treasure their story for days and weeks after reading.

Lola is funky and unique, living her life in costumes that allow her to express her exuberance and personality while also helping to hide some of the pain and embarrassment caused by her birth mother’s unfortunate life choices. She’s not quite as adorably endearing as Anna, perhaps due to the fact that in this tale it is she who is juggling the progression of one relationship with the desire to explore a completely different one, and so her inner conflict often leads her to some poor decisions that hurt those around her. While her flaws are of course realistic and certainly forgivable, our desire to see her with Cricket is just so strong that every time she defaults to Max our heart gives an extra little throb of pain.

Cricket is sweet and charming in an understated way, his charisma not quite radiating from the pages as St. Clair’s did, but his more quiet desire to remedy the misunderstandings of his shared past with Lola is equally appealing. It’s both painful and amusing to watch the two of them communicate using everything but the words they most need to say as well as hear in return from the other, a feeling we can all relate to at some point or another in our own lives. The crackling tension resulting from all that’s left unaddressed is seductively tortuous, wrapping around us tightly until our muscles object to the rigidity of our posture, yet we can’t bring ourselves to let up for a moment until we reach the end of Lola and Cricket’s story.

Though overall a touch less delectable than Anna and the French Kiss, Lola and the Boy Next Door does beautifully give us something Anna didn’t—the incorporation of Lola and Cricket’s families. Lola’s dads are hugely involved in her life and are a pleasure to read about, their family conflicts providing believable drama and causing our view of everyone as a whole to rotate those last few degrees and bring us full circle. Ms. Perkins has a gift for writing wistfully romantic stories that still manage to be grounded in reality, sating our need for sweetness while keeping us from going into sugar shock with the perfect amount of angst and emotional turmoil. The wait for her next book will no doubt test the limits of our patience, but we can take comfort in knowing our time spent counting the days will be well worth it.

Rating: 4/5

Review: Anna and the French Kiss

ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS
Stephanie Perkins
Young Adult
372 pages
Dutton Books/Penguin
Available Now

THE STORY
Most young people would be thrilled with the prospect of spending an entire school year abroad in Paris, but Anna is most certainly not one of those people at the moment. Forced to attend an American boarding school in the City of Light on the whim of her famous-author father, Anna finds herself alone in her dorm room on her first night, crying into her pillowcase.

Luckily for Anna, her next door neighbor Meredith is familiar with both the school and Paris and quickly introduces Anna to her core group of friends. Handsome, funny, and deliciously English St. Clair quickly catches her attention, and despite his commitment to longtime girlfriend Ellie, Anna can't help but find herself increasingly drawn to him.

Soon, Anna finds that not only is St. Clair handsome, but he's also very easy to talk to and seems quite interested in helping her get to know Paris. Relationship drama, family discord, and friendship turmoil find their way into Anna's everyday life, and the one person who helps her through it all and the one person she wants most remains frustratingly and heartbreakingly unavailable.

MY THOUGHTS
Anna and the French Kiss is one of those rare stories where we find ourselves instantly enamored, so swept up in the emotional conflict our facial muscles become sore from the constant oscillation between the dopey grin we are helpless to stifle during moments of innocent flirting, and the furrowed brow and drawn mouth that result when events don't go the way we hoped. It's a sweet, honest, and endearing tale illustrating how often we get in our own way in relationships, our ability to communicate utterly foiled by overthinking and overanalyzing every minute detail, thereby keeping us from the very thing we crave most and might actually acquire if we could overcome our paralyzing fear of rejection and find our voice. We clutch the pages with palms gone sweaty from the prevalent romantic tension, leaving behind a physical imprint on the book in reciprocation for the intangible but powerful impression it leaves on our hearts.

Anna is adorable and lovable, full of anxiety and insecurity over attending an international boarding school, but she impresses us by putting on a brave face most of the time, making friends of both the other students and us as readers very easily. Her inner monologues and quips are a constant source of humor, and we seamlessly slip into her mind and vicariously live out her story as though it were our own, sharing with her the dreamy stares in St. Clair's direction and the constant longing to be viewed as someone other than the best friend. Though Anna has intense feelings for St. Clair, she doesn't mope, pine, or lose herself completely in her infatuation, instead building a camaraderie and a touching friendship that simmers with a nail-biting amorous suspense, and overflows with a potential we want to see fulfilled with every fiber of our being.

St. Clair is undeniably worthy of Anna's attention, exuding blissfully believable levels of charm and wit, and leaving the overconfident bravado and pretty-boy swagger to less worthy and less interesting fictional leading men. He's physically attractive enough to warrant the ample amount of female attention he receives, but he's not so inhumanly beautiful that we can't conceive of his interest in Anna, and while he possesses an impressive number of positive attributes, he also makes several infuriating and hurtful decisions that bring him down off an unreachable pedestal and make him both more accessible and more intriguing for his flaws. Their courtship is almost painfully slow, but it's the type of pain that tingles with sensual restraint, and we find ourselves positively vibrating with tension as we not so patiently wait for the moment when passion will overtake propriety, and romantic satisfaction will finally replace the anticipation and anxiety coursing through our veins.

Anna and the French Kiss is a story that makes us smile and laugh, but also one that keeps our insides in knots as we walk the sometimes painful and uncomfortable path toward love. Anna welcomes us into her life with open arms, holding nothing back and allowing us to see all of her insecurities coupled with her extraordinary strengths, and we can't help but adore her for the joy she brings us as we fumble our way through the City of Light together. A heartwarming tale at it's finest, this book is one that can be read again and again as we never tire of the butterflies in our stomachs, the flush to our skin, and the catch in our breathing as we experience first love and all it entails.

Rating: 5/5