The Book Barbies: Review + Giveaway: The Next Door Boys by Jolene B. Perry

Title: The Next Door Boys
Author: Jolene B. Perry
Published: October 4th 2011 by Cedar Fort, Inc.
Rating: 3 hearts

Goodreads summary:
With her body still recovering from last year's cancer treatments, Leigh Tressman is determined to be independent. Despite the interference from her overprotective brother, physical frustrations, and spiritual dilemmas— not to mention the ever expanding line of young men ready to fall in love with her— Leigh discovers what it actually means to stand on her own and learns that love can be found in unexpected but delightful places.

Racquel's thoughts:
With the Plague of Paranormal, every time I come across a YA contemporary book fireworks of happiness go off and fireworks definitely erupted when I came across The Next Door Boys for the first time and can you just imagine how I felt when I saw this on netgalley, requested and got it accepted. It was a complete squeal fest and phew, thank god I wasn't disappointed!

To be honest I picked this up and one chapter into it, I put it down. I had no idea that it wasn't going to shy away from religion and I was a little scared that the further I read on, the more it was going to turn into a Christian read only. It's nice to see writers not shy away from religion but I don't want to read only about it, I'm not even Christian but later that day I decided was going to suck it up like a big girl and keep going. I can't judge a book by one chapter only and again, phew, I'm glad I didn't!

Sure religion drives the plot of the book to a certain extent but I found myself not minding at all and I can't imagine the book without it! It actually added charm to the book and it wasn't that thick of factor in the book so worry not, even if you don't like reading about religion in books I'm sure it won't bother you in The Next Door Boys.

I'm going to get this out of the way first since I seem to be singing praises so far, why did I give the book 3 hearts only if I liked it so much? Well I didn't like how Leigh judged everybody. She judged Brian at sight, she judged Kim (her roommate) on sight and she judged Meghan's (her other roommate) sister after one second in their presence. It seemed to me that quiet & nice = down to earth and amazing while loud & boy crazy = not so great of a person.

Also the fall of Noah's and Leigh relationship bother me. To be honest Perry built Noah too perfectly and it was completely out of character to do what he did at the end, I couldn't believe that sweet person at the beginning could something like that! I wish there was another way around their break up and it's the same thing with the judging here, I got the vibe that just because Noah was ambitious about his acting career that turned him into an ugly person. Fame = not a good thing. When in reality Noah was just trying to reach his goals! Just because Leigh might have not really found them great doesn't mean they're bad.

Complaints aside, I really did enjoy this book to extremes♥ I loved how Leigh had hobbies like sewing and I liked to see her grow more independent. I loved the relationship between Jaron and Leigh and Brian and Leigh. For once, an author took the time to actually DEVELOP a romantic relationship!! It made me so happy((': Brian and Leigh's relationship is probably one of my favorite romantic relationships of all time! I wish we had an epilogue though, I felt the book ended too abruptly. I was not ready to leave the characters! I will say though, I will definitely be looking forward to Perry's book and I almost died from happiness when I found out there will be TWO more books added to The Next Door Boys!!

If you have not added The Next Door Boys to your to-be-read pile, YOU ARE MISSING OUT! A great debut by Perry, this is a must read for contemporary fans!

My Rating: 3 hearts~ very good, I enjoyed it immensely!