"Who do you think you are anyway? Bruce Wayne." (Jason Trent to John Trent)
When I read a lot of serious, dark and heavy reads, I usually like to read light-hearted reads in between as a "palate cleanser". Meg Cabot is my go-to-author for feel-good books that will put a smile on my face. So, instead of picking up Sabriel, which was what I planned on reading next, I chose The Boy Next Door instead.
The Boy Next Door is a typical Meg Cabot book. It's a chick-lit filled with dramatic characters, exaggeration, pettiness over little things, hilariousness, light-heartedness and cozy feelings.
The Boy Next Door is told in a unique style. The whole entire story is narrated through emails. I was hesitant when I started this book, because in the only other book told through messaging that I've read, Love, Rosie, I couldn't relate to the characters. However, the manner in which The Boy Next Door is told allows the characters personalities to shine through their emails, makes me believe in them, feel for them and support their quest for happiness.
While this book is told through emails from different characters, the main character in The Boy Next Door is Melissa Fuller. She is a gossip columnist for The New York Journal and finds her next door neighbour unconscious in her apartment one morning. Melissa then has to take care of her neighbour's pets and this makes her late for work. In order to stop receiving those dreaded tardy slips, Melissa contacts her neighbour's only living relative, Max Freidlander. Max contacts his friend John to impersonate him to placate the next door neighbour and also to seem like a loving and caring nephew. However, Melissa and John start to bond, but she thinks that he is Max Friedlander.
The characters in this book are stereotypical, but they are also interesting and fun to read about. They are so awesome and hilarious that it is easy to forgive anything that they do and ignore anything that I don't like about them.
Melissa has a dramatic, stubborn and no-nonsense personality. There are so many occasions where she makes me laugh because of the things that she says, thinks and does. I especially love when she proved the saying, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." true. That article that she wrote about John seeking a bride in order to take revenge on him for lying to her is priceless!. Then there's John, Melissa's love interest, who is awkward and idiotic when it comes to romance, but is also so sweet and shy.
Melissa's best friend, Nadine, and her work colleagues are nosy parkers who always want to know what is going on in Melissa life, although it's none of their business. And, then there is John's family - his brother, sister-in-law, nieces and grandmother - whose interest in and arguments over what John is up to and their responses or lack thereof makes me crack up with laughter.
While The Boy Next Door is a contemporary romance, it's also a "cozy mystery". A "cozy mystery" is a mystery aspect that is treated as a sub-plot, is predictable and is part of a humourous and light-hearted story. In The Boy Next Door, the mystery is who knocked Melissa's neighbour unconscious. While I predicted who this person was from the beginning of the novel, the mystery isn't a large part of the book and the fact that the mystery is not well-developed isn't off-putting.
A unique format, characters with heart and humour and a cozy mystery... I was definitely in the mood for The Boy Next Door!
"But in order for people to be happy, sometimes they have to take risks." (Tony Salerno)