The Boy Next Door

Rating:
Summary: great beach reading
Review: Meg Cabot (of The Princess Diaries fame) delivers another boy-meets-girl story with her trademark light touch, peopled with an earnest neighbor from the Midwest, her sassy best friend, a celebrity photog, a supermodel, a Park Avenue family, and a troupe of wacky second-rate journalists, and a Great Dane.

This book is entirely in first-person due to the use of emails instead of diary entries. Surprisingly, it works. It's thoroughly enjoyable, a fast read, and something you can pick up again for a few laughs. Mel Fuller, our sweet and principled heroine, gets caught up in a New York moment when she discovers her 80-year-old, multimillionaire neighbor conked on the head. Assuming responsibilities for the woman's three pets, including Paco, the Great Dane, Mel's search for the next-of-kin leads her to Max Frielander, who may or may not be the biggest playboy of the Western hemisphere, but who charms Mel off her normally steady feet.

Enter John Trent, Max's college rommmate and a rival journalist. Emails fly between Mel and her best friend (and colleague) Nadine, John and his brother and sister-in-law, John and Max, the Human Resources Department and Mel (who is late more often than not), and of course, Mel and the Boy Next Door.

The email format works pretty well. It tells you enough while leaving details to your imagination. After all, isn't that what all good stories do? Being pretty attached to email myself, I found the email detail and frequency very believable. My only problem with the format was the presence of the author. Each of the characters wrote in slightly different styles, but you could definitely feel a common voice behind them. It made looking at the "To/From" necessary. Still, the characters themselves were very distinct ?it was just preferable when another character wrote about events, rather than the actual people involved.

The plot is slightly screwball, but adorable. If you liked The Princess Diaries (the book, not movie) or comedic romances (a la chick lit like Bridget Jones), this will hit the spot and leave you smiling.

Rating:
Summary: What a funny book!
Review: THE BOY NEXT DOOR by Meggin Cabot

Now THIS was a fun book! Told in email format, we are introduced to Melissa Fuller, a young woman who works for a newspaper called the NEW YORK JOURNAL, is always late getting in to work, and in the opening chapter she is late once again, but with a good excuse! Her neighbor was apparently knocked out cold by a would-be burglar, so Mel decides she needs to take care of the poor animals that were left behind while Mrs. Friedlander is being taken to the hospital (she is in a coma).

This sounds like a somewhat serious plot, but it's not. The book is one big gossip mill, with fellow employees and friends discussing Mel's problems, and as the book progresses, her adventures with "The Boy Next Door", John Trent, who she thinks is really Mrs. Friedlander's playboy nephew Max Friedlander.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), the two meet and fall in love. That is, John and Mel meet. But throughout their relationship, Mel thinks he's Max, as does everyone else, because no one has met the real Max, except for one of Mel's coworker's Dolly, and Dolly seems to miss out on the group gatherings where John (Max) are involved. The REAL Max is vacationing somewhere in the Keys with Victoria's Secret model VIVICA (who also gets into the act and starts writing emails from Max's computer, of course using ALL CAPS, not knowing about email etiquette).

I haven't laughed this hard while reading a book in ages! The plot itself was funny and twisted, but the email format makes the story that much more funny. For those of you in the working world and familiar with emails from co-workers, Human Resources and bosses, this book is for you! This is chicklit at it's finest but I don't think it should be relegated to just "chicks". This reader gives THE BOY NEXT DOOR 5 stars!

Rating:
Summary: Original and Fun!
Review: Loved the way it was written as a series of e-mails. It was refreshingly different. Couldn't put it down.

Rating:
Summary: A voyeur's dream book
Review: Reading Meggin Cabot's The Boy Next Door is a voyeur's dream. Comprised solely of e-mails, this novel offers the reader a peek into the lives of a group of friends and colleagues of reporter Mellissa Fuller, who's gossip column titled Page Ten is loosely based on the New York Post's legendary Page 6.

While I recommend this book and marvel at the author's ability to clearly tell this "girl unknowingly meets soulmate/millionaire" story and to allow it to unfold naturally in a series of often hilarious e-mails, it does lack the authenticity of some of the more popular first person fictionalized accounts of life in New York City.

I would doubt strongly that Ms. Cabot has ever worked as a gossip reporter and consequently this book lacks the rich details that The Devil Wears Prada and the Nanny Diaries provide. Still The Boy Next Door is a worthwhile read with enough character development to keep you happily occupied for the ten hours or so that it takes to read it.

Where Cabot's book far exceeds Prada Devil and Nanny Diaries is that this is a classic story with a beginning, a middle and an end. It's compelling from the start, suspenseful in the middle and all the loose ends are tied up at the conclusion.

While most readers between 15 and 50 would find this book enjoyable, I strongly recommend it to teenage girls looking for a fun look into the lives of 20-somethings finding their way in the world.

Rating:
Summary: A cute idea and a cute story¿
Review: While the idea of telling novels entirely through e-mail is becoming more common, this is the first novel I had read using this style. The main character, Melissa Fuller, who works at New York Journal as the gossip columnist seems like a fun, genuinely nice person. Her main problem is she can't find a man, a good man that is. Then, one of her elderly neighbors is found in her apartment unconscious, apparently the victim of an attempted murder. Her only living relative is a playboy photographer named Max, who has MUCH better things to do they come to his aunt's apartment and watch after her animals. So what does he do? He asks an old college buddy John Trent, to fill in for him. John agrees, until he meets Melissa, and realizes she's the girl he's been looking for. Although a bit predictable in some spots, I found the novel pretty cute, and I liked how lesser characters, like Melissa's parents and John's sister-in-law were included. The only thing that really bothered me what the fact that sometimes the style of e-mail to tell a story made me feel like I didn't get to know the characters as well as I liked. However, for a cute, quick read, it was only a minor problem.

Rating:
Summary: Humorous romance
Review: I picked up this book because of the fact that it was written purely in emails from one character to another. Amazingly, she pulls off the plot without any narration. I enjoyed the style of writing - being basically pure dialog - although sometimes I was frustrated that you couldn't be 'at' an important event taking place because since it is just emails, you had to wait for that character to email another character about it later to find out what happened.

But, who wouldn't love to read everyone else's personal emails?

The story was interesting and humorous.

I'd recommend her 'sequel' to this book, Boy Meets Girl, it deals w/ different charcters who are connected to the ones you get to know in this book. Plus she adds voicemail, transcripts, receipts, menus and other devices to her staple of e-mails.

Different from your typical chick-lit novel in style. Over all, it was a pretty good read.

Rating:
Summary: Fast, Fun Read!
Review: Melissa "Call Me Mel" Fuller is the page 10 gossip columnist for the New York Journal and really wants to be able to write some serious editorials. However, her editor won't let her because Mel is one of those people who actually cares about who Winona Ryder is dating. But Mel thinks that she has a chance at selling a story to her editor when her elderly next-door neighbor, Mrs. Friedlander, is attacked, putting her in a coma in the hospital and making Mel late for work - for the 37th time that year! Her editor doesn't buy it, which is too bad, because Mel could really use someone cutting her some slack. After all, who else is going to walk Paco, Mrs. Friedlander's Great Dane, and feed her two cats? Everyone at work tells Mel to stop being such a wimp and to dump the problem on Max Friedlander, her neighbor's playboy nephew. So Mel drops the problem in Max's lap, who promptly turns to his old college friend, John Trent, who owes him a huge favor since he stopped him from marrying that stripper in Vegas. John isn't too excited about posing as Max, even if it is only for a few days, until he meets Mel. John is instantly attracted to her and can tell that she likes him, too. There is just one problem - she thinks he is Max!

This book is just so fun to read! I read it easily in one sitting and the whole thing just flew by. The story is told in the form of emails as Mel writes her soon-to-be-married best friend, her best friend's chef of a fiance, the real Max, John the fake Max, the mean spirited human resource department at work, John's brother and sister-in-law, John's fabulously wealthy grandmother, Mrs. Friedlander's dog and cats, as well as a host of other zany characters who all seem to be way too interested in Mel's love life or lack thereof. Anyway, you will love all of the characters as they are all real people going through those crazy things that life throws at you. Mel is especially wonderful and it is so fun to see her personality shine through her emails rather than the author describing everything that is happening. If you have enjoyed any of Cabot's other tales than you know how wonderful she is! Do yourself a favor and buy this book!

Rating:
Summary: Book Review: The Boy Next Door
Review: The book The Boy Next Door by Meg Cabot is about a girl named Mel, who had a neighbor who was an old lady. The old lady was knocked on the head by an anonymous person and she went into a coma. This old lady, named Helen Friedlander had two cats and a dog. Somebody had to take care of the animals so Mel had to do the job but it interfered with her life and her work. Helen's only relative is her nephew Max Friendlander. Mel e-mailed Max and asked him to come and stay with the animals. He said yes, but he secretly sent one of his friends in his place, John. Mel and John fell in love, and there are even more hardships and conflicts from there on. It was a fun book to read. The author, Meg Cabot used very great details.The whole book is e-mails back and forth among different people. Meg Cabot always kept me wanting to keep turning the pages; this book was never boring. I felt like I was actually there in the book it was so real. I think teenage girls would like this book, and maybe even women in their twenties or thirties.

Rating:
Summary: The Boy Next Door
Review: The Boy Next Door
By Meg Cabot
Reviewed by Johanna Saunders
The Boy Next Door is a book that is filled with emails about people's lives. The main character, Melissa Fuller, tells about her life after her eighty-five year old neighbor has gone into a coma. Melissa must then decide how to balance work, and taking care of her neighbors pets. Until she realizes that her neighbor has a grandson who's a famous photographer. And must then try to find out how to track him down. After finally finding his email address, she emails him to ask if he could come up (from the Florida Keys) to look after his grandmas pets. Although he says that he can come up, he doesn't. And instead, decides to send up his best friend in his place, without informing Melissa that it really isn't him. He only did this because he wishes to stay in Key West with the beautiful supermodel Vivica. Not only did Alex see no harm in sending his best friend in his place, but the last thing that he even imagined happening, came true. And now his best friend, John Trent, is in love with Melissa. Now they are in the tightest situation possible, they could either tell Melissa all that has happened, and that he isn't really Alex. Or his other possibility is to get out of there as quickly as possible, without even warning Melissa or Alex about his problem. Not only that, but now John has been showing up on many different scenes that might suspect that he isn't really who she thinks, for example, showing up on crime scenes, so that he can write some of his newspaper articles for The New York Post. What will happen between Melissa and John? Read The Boy Next Door to find out!
This book really appealed to me because of the main plot. It's always fun to read about people with different, untrue identities, and how they deal with telling people that it's not really them. And the many scenes when it was a close call for Melissa to find out that John's not really who he appears to be. The Boy Next Door would definitely be a good book for anyone who enjoys reading an interesting romance novel.

Rating:
Summary: Loved this book!
Review: Definitely a book for a die hard romantic... I'm not sure if I would have enjoyed the story more or less if it had been written in the "regular" way. The emails made it very different than most romances that are out there today. So, if you're getting a little bored with the same old stuff, you should try this one out.