Three Cheers

Today's RTW Question from YA Highway is: What was the best book you read in October?

So give three cheers...

For LOLA, LOLA, LOLA! Without a doubt, Lola and the Boy Next Door was my favorite read this month. Set in San Francisco, eclectic Lola thinks she has it all—a hot rocker boyfriend, loving parents, a plan to make the most gorgeous Marie Antoinette dress for the school dance. But when Calliope and Cricket Bell move back in next door, Lola has to face the truth of what happened between her and Cricket a few summers earlier. Luckily, the boy next door is a creative genius and dreamy…really, the perfect complement to Lola.

This is Stephanie Perkin’s second contemporary romance and her first book, Anna and the French Kiss, was my favorite read a few months ago. But Lola and the Boy Next Door was even better. In Anna and the French Kiss I fell in love with Paris: the sights, the sounds, and the idea of falling in love in the world’s most romantic city. In Lola and the Boy Next Door I fell in love with Lola herself—her spunk, her eccentricities, her talent for costume that I wish I had. I wanted to be Lola—wanted to have what Lola had by the end of the novel (okay, I do have what Lola has…but my teen self would have wanted it!). Not only does she get the (right) boy, but she also becomes a fuller person. I even—gasp—missed when Anna and St. Clair made their first appearance in Lola and the Boy Next Door because I was so enraptured by Lola and her world! Lola is fabulous! 

Stay tuned for a review of Daughter of Smoke and Bone on Friday as part of Fall Book Club, and mini-reviews next week of all my October reads.