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    The Boy Next Door: A Novel
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    The Boy Next Door: A Novel
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    The Boy Next Door: A Novel
    Ebook708 pages4 hours

    The Boy Next Door: A Novel

    By Meg Cabot

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

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    About this ebook

    To: You (you)
    From: Human Resources (human.resources@thenyjournal.com)
    Subject: This Book

    Dear Reader,

    This is an automated message from the Human Resources Division of the New York Journal, New York City’s leading photo-newspaper. Please be aware that according to our records you have not yet read this book. What exactly are you waiting for? This book has it all:

    • Humor
    • Romance
    • Cooking tips
    • Great Danes
    • Heroine in peril
    • Dolphin-shaped driftwood sculptures

    If you wish to read about any of the above, please do not hesitate to head to the checkout counter, where you will be paired with a sales associate who will work to help you buy this book.

    We here at the New York Journal are a team. We win as a team, and lose as one as well. Don’t you want to be on the winning team?

    Sincerely,
    Human Resources Division
    New York Journal

    Please note that failure to read this book may result in suspension or dismissal from this store.

    *********This e-mail is confidential and should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient. If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage mechanism.*********

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMar 17, 2009
    ISBN9780061828867
    Author

    Meg Cabot

    MEG CABOT’s many books for both adults and teens have included numerous #1 New York Times bestsellers, with more than twenty-five million copies sold worldwide. Her Princess Diaries series was made into two hit films by Disney, with a third movie coming soon. Meg currently lives in Key West, Florida, with her husband and various cats.

    Read more from Meg Cabot

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    Reviews for The Boy Next Door

    3.5/5

    881 ratings36 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      GREAT sumer read - quick and lots of fun!
    • 5/5
      I loved the email format. Meg Cabot has a great sense of humor and the romance within the book is addictive. Found myself rooting them on and wanting to send in my own email.
    • 4/5
      This is a light, charming, contemporary romance featuring a case of assumed identity: He pretends to be somebody else, and during his masquerade finds his special someone... Published in 2002, it shows its age a little bit: The general public is getting more into e-mail, and there is no Google, FaceBook or Skype... and if there was, this plot would fall apart very quickly! Still, a fun & funny story told primarily through e-mails :-)
    • 5/5
      I loved this story which consisted entirely of emails. The action, plot, romance all good and it was hilarious. I don't know when I've laughed so much. Gossip columnist Mel finds the elderly women next door barely alive. When the neighbors nephew comes to take care of her pets, he says his nickname is John.
    • 5/5
      What I particularly enjoyed about this book is the originality of the writing style. The book is written in a modern epistolary fashion, it develops through the emails the various characters exchange.
      The story is witty, there is a little bit of a mystery to solve, which I always enjoy, and the book overall is light and refreshing.
    • 3/5
      Light fluffy read. I was put off by the format at first. The whole book is a series of emails between characters, which was weird and hard to get into. but once I did, I loved how each character had their own writing style and dynamics with other characters.
    • 4/5
      Thank goodness for Meg Cabot, because after finishing IOU, I felt ready to put off reading for the foreseeable future (see review at tometombfidelity.blogspot.com). I needed something interesting, stat!Along came The Boy Next Door. This was the first book by Meg Cabot I have read. I am glad I did! I read the book yesterday evening. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram called it "A fast, addictive read." Indeed it was.The book takes the form of emails. The entire story is told through emails. It's like those books written through letters or a diary. Except this one was well done. The story was complete but did not feel unrealistic. The emails were not so complete as to render them unrealistic, and yet all of the facts were disclosed in a timely and interesting manner.Mel Fuller, gossip columnist for the NY Journal, meets her neighbor Max Friedland, who is really his friend John Trent "of the Park Avenue Trents" because of an attack on her elderly neighbor, Max Friedland's aunt and only living relative. Max, of course, is too busy to take care of his neighbor himself, which is why he sends his friend John in his place.It was so enjoyable to read. The story was somewhat "fairy tale," but in a real-life kind of way. To top it off, there was also a mystery to be solved?! For a girl, at least, the story had it all: mystery, friendship, parent-interaction, job drama, and love. Highly recommend for a quick escape into a wonderful fantasy where men are somehow both sensitive and masculine.
    • 3/5
      Had the hard copy when I was younger
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book alot
    • 3/5
      3.5 stars
    • 4/5
      3.5
    • 3/5
      To: You (you)
      From: Human Resources (human.resources@thenyjournal.com)
      Subject: This Book

      Dear Reader,
      This is an automated message from the Human Resources Division of the New York Journal, New York City’s leading photo-newspaper. Please be aware that according to our records you have not yet read this book. What exactly are you waiting for? This book has it all:

      •Humor
      •Romance
      •Cooking tips
      •Great Danes
      •Heroine in peril
      •Dolphin-shaped driftwood sculptures
      If you wish to read about any of the above, please do not hesitate to head to the checkout counter, where you will be paired with a sales associate who will work to help you buy this book.

      We here at the New York Journal are a team. We win as a team, and lose as one as well. Don’t you want to be on the winning team?

      Sincerely,
      Human Resources Division
      New York Journal

      Please note that failure to read this book may result in suspension or dismissal from this store.

      *********This e-mail is confidential and should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient. If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage mechanism.*********
    • 3/5
      Quick and light, addictive, but not heavy on substance. A bit dated as well, which is odd-I'd think 2009 wouldn't feel quite that way.

    • 2/5
      Slightly amusing, but I think the email format is very dated now, so what was once amusing ends up being a gimmick that doesn't quite work out of context.

      2.75 is more accurate of a rating.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Very cute book! I loved the way it was written entirely in email form. That made it very fun to read. Very funny! Highly recommended if you want a fun book that entertains but doesn't require much thought. Great for the beach or just relaxing and vegging out.
    • 3/5
      They say it's easy to read but I didn't think so. Some times made me bored so I had taken more than 2 weeks to read up!But ending was OK.
    • 2/5
      This book is very problematic for me. When I first read it, I really enjoyed the story. And then I gave it subsequent rereads. The biggest problem I have overall is the characterization. I’m sorry, but I have a very hard time believing that a professional working woman at the age of 27 acts more like an eighteen-year old when it comes to her romantic relationships. Nor do I think that she would have gotten away with some of her actions- such as placing false information, gossip column or not- with as little of a punishment. While I give the story credit for being loose and playful with taking a murder mystery and giving it a romantic comedy flair, the number of clichéd tropes that show up in the book grated me at times. (Such as Nadine’s plotline of being the fat best friend. Yes, she accepts her size 16 body, but she goes on for 200 pages with little development beyond “Omg, I cannot fit into my mother’s wedding dress!”) Oh, and the fact that everyone insists that Mel take back John after it’s discovered that he did, in fact, lie to her: Mel was completely in the right to insist that she couldn’t trust John anymore, and the roundabout way they make up was just too neatly-wrapped up for me. (I love Meg Cabot’s books, I really do, but there are some that I finish and go “Seriously?”)
    • 3/5
      This is a great book if you only have a minute or two here and there. You can read a bit here and there until you are really caught up in it. A mystery, but told in emails, and while it takes some patience, it is a lot of fun! I also learned a new technique for sending emails.
    • 4/5
      This was my first foray into chick lit, and I would call it a success. The Boy Next Door reads like the inspiration material for a romantic comedy - cute and fluffy with moments of laugh-out-loud hilarity. (Seriously, I could see this book being adapted into an awesome movie!) Like a romantic comedy, the main focus is on the relationship between the hero and the heroine with various obstacles that get in the way, a cast of quirky supporting characters, some situational comedy, and a mystery that needs solving thrown in as a backdrop. It’s light, fun, and romantic, and I finished it in a day.The story is told entirely through email messages, an interesting style that adds humor and suspense, and allows for multiple points of view. The one problem with the email correspondence is that it left me feeling somewhat removed from the real action, especially at the end. When it all gets wrapped up, I felt a little disappointed, like I wanted more out of the story than could be told through emails.But overall, The Boy Next Door is an amusing, entertaining book. It’s not great literature, but it’s not supposed to be. It fit my current mood perfectly, and that’s part of what made it so enjoyable. Though I don’t think I could take a steady diet of chick lit, I wouldn’t be opposed to picking up another book like this at some point in the future.
    • 3/5
      The Boy Next Door is told entirely in emails between the characters. It's copy-written in 2002 so the characters all have dial-up and can't email and talk on the phone at the same time. It was pretty funny to realize how much technology has changed in just eight years. Anyway, having the story told entirely in emails made the story flow a little awkwardly at times. I definitely had to suspend reality when I found myself wondering if someone would really write an email with that much detail and just go with it.The story is a combination romance and cozy mystery. Melissa Fuller is a single New York writer. The little old lady that lives next door to her is mysteriously attacked and a man claiming to be her nephew comes to live in his aunt's apartment to take care of her pets while she's in the hospital.The mystery plot line of who attacked the aunt kept me guessing for most of the book. The romance plot line was lacking a little something for me. I think the email format kept the chemistry between Melissa and her boyfriend from coming across as well as it would have with a regular format.I listened to the audio book version of this book. The format of this book made it awkward for an audio book because the narrator had to read the subject, sender's email address and recipient's email address for every email. Also, there is a gay character that the narrator voices in a completely over the top and very annoying manner. I think if I would have read the paper version of this book it would have gotten four stars.
    • 4/5
      Gently funny epistolatory chicklit set in Manhattan and the world of journalism.
    • 4/5
      Mel ends up pet sitting her elderly neighbour's dog and cats until a very handsome relative of said neighbour moves in to take over.
    • 4/5
      I'm a sap for a cute gimmick in a book; this book has one: it is written totally in e-mails. Lots of fun if you aren't expecting Shakespeare.
    • 4/5
      This book of e-mails based on the life of mel is a fun book to read. This book shows diffrent perspectives. THat includes her boss,ex-boyfriend, nosy colleages, and the man that is pretending to be max freelander. I could not put this book down. This book grasped my attention with its quik humorouse, and believable background.
    • 4/5
      A light, fun read. I really liked Mel; she was a character I could relate to. Near the end I realized I already read the book last summer. I was surprised at how well Cabot not only wrote the book in e-mails but made every e-mail believable. Lots of humour making it a good piece of chick-lit!
    • 4/5
      I read this last in the series - but the series is so loosely connected that it didn't really make much difference, although if I could have remembered these characters from book number 2 I could have found out "what happened next". Also written in epistolary style, which contributes to the humor factor. Just goes to show that you really never should lie!
    • 3/5
      Cute and funny, and incredibly fast read.
    • 4/5
      Ah, the modern epistolary romance*! This one is conducted entirely via email and is quite charming. As with all epistolary stories, there's a certain level of incredulity that people would sit around typing all this stuff up, though every romance comes with a certain incredulity threshold so this isn't particularly an obstacle. I like the email style, in part, because it takes so much less time to write a quick little email (say an hour) than long rambling letters (staying up all night) and the book takes place over a span of -months- so you don't have to imagine that they're writing all night, every night, like, for instance, Richardson's "Pamela".The problems I had with the email style were that A) the subject lines were frequently the first half of the first sentence of the email. That's not how I write emails, that's not how the people with whom I correspond write emails, and, quite frankly, I usually didn't read the subject line until I realized I'd missed half the sentence and had to go back; B) one of the minor characters kept overhearing the protagonist and her best friend discussing things in the bathroom (they all work together) except we, the readers, know what they were discussing because they'd just exchanged detailed emails about it. Who writes an email, writing out everything in detail, and then runs off to the bathroom to repeat all the same information? One of those two exchanges should be scarce on details, either a shorter "meet me in the bathroom so I can tell you everything" email or a bathroom conversation that doesn't bother to repeat everything all over again. Also, wouldn't you, eventually, start looking to see if any of the stalls are occupied?But I did enjoy the story, and I believed that the characters got to know each other over a span of time and fell in love. This is as opposed to the subsequent novels :o)*Part of me really wants to write an essay comparing modern epistolary romances to those of the late 18th century (Richardson, Burney, et al). I should possibly track down more modern examples, by other authors.
    • 3/5
      This was a very fun, quick read. It wasn’t terribly original or anything special, but for pulp fiction it did just fine. The romantic lead reminded me a bit too much of Carter from ER (trust kid living like a normal middle-class person, first name is John, Grandma is too much in his life and trying to get him a woman), but the main character and her gabby best friend were fun. Oh yeah, and the e-mail format was a welcome change and very fluid. The reconciliation part was too fast and easy. You knew they were going to get back together, but that’s supposed to be the best part of the movie (book, I mean book!).
    • 4/5
      Cute book all written in e-mail format