Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins (Review)

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Number of Pages: 338

For ages 14+ for some strong language

"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." -Goodreads

*CAUTION: This may be a lengthy review just because I stinkin' loved this book.*

OH MY STINKING GOODNESS! So when I first got this package, I was at school. I pre-ordered it to get it the day it came out and I was just counting the hours until play practice was over to come home and GET MY PACKAGE! So, when I see my mother has laid it on the steps in all it's brown cardboard beauty I literally squealed. Unfortunately, Amazon likes to make things difficult for me, so it was quite a process to open it. I refused to use anything but my hands, so this process took me about 5 minutes. You should know, though, that I have the strength of an elementary school child. (And not even a STRONG elementary school child!) When I finally got it open I squealed in even more excitement, which my older brother did not appreciate.

Maybe now I should actually REVIEW this book. I'm sure you all would enjoy that. Wouldn't you?

I find it ABSOLUTELY amazing that an author like Stephanie can make you automatically connect with a character in the first five pages. I'm not even joking. I literally fell in love with Lola's personality in a matter of minutes. She's got a personality that sticks to you like glue. You can't help but thinking like her when you're reading. I read this whole book in about four hours. And yes, it was a weekday. But no, I was not at school. Unfortunately, I'm sick. The fortunate part of being sick? LOTS of reading time. I barely stopped reading this book. So, I was thinking like Lola almost those whole four hours. I probably was thinking a little bit like her OUTSIDE of reading this book.

Another thing of the many things I liked about this book, was the similarities between Anna and the French Kiss and Lola and the Boy Next Door. Sometimes, similarities can be a bad thing. But other times, they can be quite refreshing. It was amazing to see that all of the things you loved in ANNA were coming back in different ways in LOLA. I mean, these reasons are the reason that Anna and the French Kiss is my favorite book. So to have these similarities, in the same style, by the same author, it just makes another divine book.

Can I just take a moment here to SWOON? I really hope none of you are getting tired of this. Cricket. He's definitely a BIG competitor against Etienne. Etienne who? JUST JOKING! I WOULD NEVER DO THAT, ETIENNE! ...I mean, what? *crickets chirp* CRICKET?! WHERE?! But yeah... he's.... he's pretty cool... I'm pretty sure Stephanie is in my head and knows how to make me swoon because she's done it to me two books in a row. Look at that column over there ----> See a specific name under a specific list? Just wonderin'...

Something I would just like to say here is, I never liked Matt, I never will. There may have been some people who kind of liked him in the beginning, and I'm okay with that. I mean, he was alright, I guess, *SPOILER ALERT!* but after they broke up he was beyond a complete jerk(I would totally be adding a bad word here to describe him if I used that kind of language.), and I definitely did not like him after that. HE vexed the heck out of me. (See what reading does to my vocabulary? Reading, kids. It's what makes you smart.) *You may now return to my marvelous review!*

I was super excited to find that Stephanie had incorporated Anna and St. Clair multiple times into the story. Lola works at the same movie theater that Anna did in Anna and the French Kiss. Let me tell you, St. Clair? Still swoon worthy as ever. I was ecstatic to see that Anna and St. Clair's relationship was still in full swing. Anna was still her awesome self, and hadn't lost any of her personality from ANNA.

Now the question is, which book will reign as my favorite now? DON'T ASK ME THAT! ...I need to wrap my ill head around this. Maybe I can choose when I don't have a body temperature that's rising to another fever. Until then, it will be ANNA, just because I'm not losing my obsession for Paris, France ANY time soon.

You probably should have known how many diva crowns this book was gonna get by the second paragraph. If you didn't then you need to get better inferring skills. JUST JOKING, I LOVE YOU! ...I need to stop before this gets out of hand. This book gets 5 out of 5 diva crowns. As if there was any question!