Out of curiosity, I read Anna and French Kiss a few months ago and painfully remembered how old I was. Even though I didn’t like Stephanie Perkin’s first novel, they didn’t deter me from reading her companion book, Lola and the Boy Next Door. Maybe because deep in my heart I am still a young girl who passes out and feels dizzy.
Unfortunately though, despite the reviews and reviews I’ve read, despite the reviews I’ve read, Lola and the Boy Next Door never made me pass out or feel dizzy. At best, probably the best description I can think of of how I felt reading this book is that I endured it to the end. Only on rare occasions do I drop an unfinished book, and on Lola and the boy next door, my stamina was put to the test. But I must give it to Miss Perkins, she has created some very attractive titles for her books.
So what is the story about? I’m too lazy, I don’t really want to do my own roundup, so here’s one I got from Goodreads:
Budding designer Lola Nolan doesn’t believe in fashion … she believes in wardrobe. The more expressive the outfit, the brighter, the funnier, the wilder, the better. But even though Lola’s style is outrageous, she is a devoted daughter and friend with big plans for the future. And everything is pretty perfect (even her hot rocker boyfriend) until the dreaded twins Bell, Calliope and Cricket, return to the neighborhood.
When Cricket, a talented inventor, steps out of the shadow of his twin sister and returns to Lola’s life, she must finally reconcile a lifetime of feelings for the boy next door.
This book is full of superficiality, in my opinion. First of all, I can’t quite understand the big problem there is about Max and Lola’s age difference. Come on, five year age difference? Is that a big problem? And then there’s the little problem of the misunderstanding about what happened during Cricket’s birthday party the year before, which was the reason why Lola was hugely mad at Cricket. Right. What a thing. Read the book and see how shallow this book is.
And as much as I want to keep an open mind about the topics covered in the book, I can’t just ignore the fact that most, if not all, of these topics are contrary to my beliefs. Lola and the Boy Next Door, despite its cute cover and seemingly innocent and pleasant premise, is a book overflowing with lust, definitely not a book that I would recommend to my own young daughter.
One thing I noticed is that Stephanie Perkins seems to have a thing for a child’s hair. Etienne in Anna and the French Kiss has “beautiful, perfect hair” and in this book, Miss Perkins can’t seem to run out of adjectives to describe how beautiful Cricket’s hair is.
Yuck. Maybe I am very old.
1 star.
