Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins

Title: Lola and the Boy Next Door (Anna and the French Kiss #2) Author: Stephanie Perkins Genre: Young Adult, Romance, Contemporary Published: September 2011 My Rating: 3/5 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.

I must start by saying that I really liked Anna and the French Kiss, it’s incredibly cute. Here's my review if you’re interested in reading it:

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

After I finished the first book in the series I wanted to get my hands on Lola and the Boy Next Door and read it right away… I must say that, sadly, it didn’t meet my expectations.

I’m not saying that it’s bad at all, but I liked Anna and the French Kiss so much that I expected to like this one just as much. When I really like a book, I just can’t wait to have some free time so that I can keep reading it. That didn’t happen with this book.

I’ll try to keep this as spoiler-free as I can.

And by the way, you don’t really need to have read Anna and the French Kiss to read this, Anna and her boyfriend do appear in this book though, but you don’t really have to know their story for this book… Although it’s cute if you do know it, because you get to see how they’ve been doing.

I have to say that I really liked Lola, she seemed like a smart girl and I loved that she had such a unique style. She was raised by her gay parents, both male. I did love that too, it’s great to see that families like that are more and more common nowadays.

There’s also Max, Lola’s boyfriend. Hmm I didn’t really like him, but I did not hate him either or anything, it was like ‘Ok, whatever, from the moment we pick up this book we know that she’s not gonna end up with him, so…’ and you’re just waiting for the moment when they break up, because you know it’s going to happen. And I know there are some people who say that Stephanie made Max a little bit of an asshole in the end so we wouldn’t blame Lola for leaving him for Cricket or whatever… but dude, I think he was a little bit of an asshole from the very beginning, he was just very good at hiding it. It was there.

And then there’s Cricket. He was really sweet and crazy about Lola, I also liked their story a lot, it was cute. But it did take a lot of time for them to get together, and I still don’t understand how neither of them was incredibly angry at Calliope (God, I love that name) for doing what she did. It was all her fault!

Oh and Calliope also mentions Cricket’s ex-girlfriend… Was I the only one who wanted to know more about that? Haha.

Like I said, Anna and St. Clair appear in this book. A lot. But I have to admit that Anna felt kind of different from the last book, more mature, I think? Étienne was just the same goofball as always. I really like them, it was nice to have them and their cuteness back.

Well, that’s pretty much all I have to say. I read this book, it was nice, I didn’t love it, I didn’t hate it.

Now I really don’t know if I should read Isla and the Happily Ever After. I didn’t really want to read it when I heard that the love interest was Josh, and now that I read Lola and didn’t like it that much even though I liked the main characters, I don’t think I’ll like the third one, I’m not a big fan of Josh.

Have you read Lola and the Boy Next Door? What did you think of it?

Oh and if you read Isla and the Happily Ever After, would you recommend it?

Thank you for reading! Bye-Bye! ♥