The Boy Is Back

August 29, 2016
Bestseller Cabot’s novel, told entirely through documents such as emails and transcripts, concerns smalltown Indiana woman Becky Flowers, whose ex-boyfriend Reed Stewart returns to Bloomville after 10 years away as a famous pro golfer. Reed’s parents find themselves making headlines after news of their attempt to pay for a meal with a postage stamp. While Reed’s sister-in-law Carly insists that his parents are senile hoarders, Reed and his brother, Marshall, argue that they’re merely eccentric. Reed’s unpleasant and litigious sister, Trimble, appears to have sinister motives for enabling their parents’ issues, but almost everyone else agrees that they need to pare down and move to warmer climes. Cabot’s plot is driven by convenient coincidence: Becky happens to be a specialist in helping elderly people move. She and Reed still clearly have the hots for each other, and the presence of Becky’s current boyfriend, Graham, is essentially inconsequential. Another old chestnut, the inability for the would-be lovers to communicate their true feelings for one another, is also thrown into the mix and drags out the story. Cabot’s method of storytelling, though clever, runs into problems when it turns clunkily to inevitable exposition. The author does a good job of portraying the sixth-grade mean-girl mentality of living in the town where you grew up; the characters are almost 30 but still talk about high school like it was yesterday.

October 15, 2016
A humiliating internet post sends golf pro Reed Stewart home to help his parents out of a mess.Cabot (Remembrance, 2016, etc.) tells the story of an estranged adult son returning home for the first time in a decade to assist his siblings with their aging parents. The once-prominent Judge Stewart and his wife have always been a little eccentric but have recently gone off the deep end in their Grey Gardens-style manor complete with a collection of antique gavels, old newspapers, and stray animals. They've also found themselves on the wrong side of the law by accidentally skipping out on their dinner bill at a local chain restaurant, ironically named Shenanigans. The judge thought he was leaving the waitress a generous tip when he placed a collectible postage stamp on the table; instead it was worth less than a fountain drink. Their foible finds its way online, leaving them laughingstocks facing prison time. Using the tired convention of telling a story entirely through emails, text messages, and diary entries, Cabot has created a family comedy that manages to be both meandering and frenetic but rarely funny. Reed and his siblings ping furious barbs that ring hollow and forced and seem to serve the sole function of filling pages, not engaging readers in a story they will care about. Will the Stewarts go to prison? Will Reed get back together with the ex-girlfriend he inexplicably abandoned after their high school prom ended with an accident that landed their golf cart in a pool? Getting the answers to these questions isn't worth the time and energy it takes to read this sophomoric fluff. Like the text thread you wish you'd never been included in, this one is best deleted.

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September 1, 2016
Cabot returns to her loosely connected, epistolary Boy books with this fourth spirited sequel. Times have changed since the publication of Every Boy's Got One (2005). Gone are the Blackberry messages, interoffice memos, and handwritten notes; this installment is told through smartphones, chat apps, and Buzzfeed-esque news reports. Becky Flowers runs a moving company for relocating seniors out of her Indiana hometown, working with her family and dating a perfectly nice guy. She's completely satisfied with her life until her high-school boyfriend walks back into it. Reed Stewart, now a successful professional golfer, hasn't been home in 10 years, and Becky's managed to (mostly) forget about their electric connection and the terrible way things ended. But Reed's parents are in trouble. He and his siblings need to move them across the country, and, well, Becky's the local pro. Is anyone surprised when sparks start to fly again? This is frothy, laugh-out-loud fun from a reliable favorite, and Cabot fans new and old will embrace this romance for a new decade.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)