The Boy Next Story

March 15, 2019
The Campbell girls' (mis)adventures at Hero High pick up without missing a beat in this follow-up to Bookish Boyfriends (2018).Merri has adjusted to high school and is now dating Fielding, the headmaster's son. She's also assisting older sister Lilly with her upcoming nuptials. Meanwhile youngest sister Rory is feeling like the odd-man out. Rory's sophomore mentor, Toby, who is supposed to help her acclimate to the school, is so smitten with Merri that he does not always seem to remember Rory; Toby certainly doesn't notice that Rory has fallen for him. Merri and Lilly leave Rory out of wedding planning, and ordinarily, Rory would escape into her art, but upperclassmen jealous of her talent are deliberately sabotaging her work. What's a girl to do? If English teacher Ms. Gregoire has anything to say about it, Rory will take a page from a classic. If The Great Gatsby, with its pining protagonist, doesn't suit her, then how about Little Women? Told in the first-person, Rory takes cues from literature, attaining great insights about her self-worth and expectations for love. The love focus is so exclusive that secondary characters and plotlines fall into the background, including the possibility of a life-changing opportunity to study with an illustrious New York City artist. The Campbells are white, Toby is Latinx, and ethnicity is difficult to determine for other characters.Even if one-note, Rory's story will still ring a chord with die-hard romantics. (Fiction. 12-15)

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June 14, 2019

Gr 7 Up-In the second book of this series, Rory takes center stage. She is deeply infatuated with Toby, the boy next door and her older sister Merri's best friend. When Rory's new friends Huck and Clara offer to help her get Toby's attention, Rory decides it's worth a try. At the same time, they're reading The Great Gatsby in English class. Seeing parallels between her life and Gatsby's, Rory decides to change her course and give up on Toby. She struggles with all her classes except art, which is the one good thing about transferring to Hero High. Toby offers to help her with math and the more time they spend together, the more Rory realizes she never really knew the boy next door at all. Rory is a relatable narrator. She faces struggles with school, meeting new people, and the anxiety of feeling not good enough. The story is easy to follow even if it changes halfway through from a loose retelling of The Great Gatsby to Little Women. There are several laugh-out-loud moments and the secondary characters are developed. VERDICT Recommend to fans of the first novel and fans of realistic romance.-Natalie Struecker, Cedar Rapids Public Library, IA

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2019
Grades 7-10 Freshman Aurora Rory Campbell is a talented artist with uninspiring grades and an unrequited crush on Toby, the boy next door. She's convinced he doesn't notice her because he's mooning over her sister Merrilee, the sophomore dynamo from Bookish Boyfriends: A Date with Darcy (2018). Though Toby's nice to her, Rory ultimately feels ignored by him and her older sisters. When Rory's lit class reads The Great Gatsby, she is put off by Gatsby's overt pining for Daisy and just can't make connections to the novel. Once again, wise Ms. Gregoire works her teacherly magic by assigning Little Women as extra credit, both to help Rory's sagging grades and to assist her with indispensable introspection. Rory is a lively, relatable narrator who suffers from low self-esteem. Yet, the art that fills her soul transports her to her own creative zone. This light rom-com holds heartbreak, surprises, and significant Campbell family dynamics that will hit home with many teens. Happily, hints dropped indicate that this is not the last of the series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)