Budding designer Lola Nolan doesn’t believe in
fashion...she believes in costume. The more expressive the outfit--more
sparkly, more fun, more wild--the better. But even though Lola’s style is
outrageous, she’s a devoted daughter and friend with some big plans for the
future. And everything is pretty perfect (right down to her hot rocker
boyfriend) until the dreaded Bell twins, Calliope and Cricket, return to the
neighbourhood.When Cricket--a gifted inventor--steps out from his twin sister’s shadow and back into Lola’s life, she must finally reconcile a lifetime of feelings for the boy next door.
So you know how much I loved ‘Anna and the French Kiss’? I
have a terrible confession to make, I really didn’t enjoy ‘Lola and the Boy
Next Door’. And I feel terrible because everyone was saying how if I loved the
first one then the second one was just going to blow me away, and really how
couldn’t I love the second one given my feelings about the first? But whilst
there were some awesome elements to Lola, she just didn’t do it for me in the
same way that Anna did.
The problem for me was Lola herself. Whilst Anna was an
engaging and fantastic narrator, Lola came across as incredibly immature and a
little whiny. I loved the idea of Lola, she was feisty and didn’t conform and
had her own very unique sense of self and didn’t let anybody crush that or take
it away from her. All fantastic things that I really loved, but they just didn’t
come across as they should have done. It was all very dramatic and over the
top, completely over blown until it stopped feeling like it could be real, it
was almost a caricature of the ideas.
Lola is desperate to be seen as unique and mature, but the
overblown costumes actually detracted from that. I think there was a balance of
costuming that could have really made the idea work, but there were moments
that tipped her over from spunky individual, to young teenage girl craving
attention. Which only served to highlight the terrible relationship with her
boyfriend, Max. I didn’t see the attraction of Max at all, the whole way
through the book he gave me the creeps and I just desperately wanted to get
Lola away from him, so again a lot of the tension and drama of the story
vanished with my dislike of this character.
I also struggled with the portrayal of Lola’s family life.
The demands that she had to call and check in with her parent’s every hour? I
felt like they were treating her like a much younger girl and it made a lot of
the book feel less realistic. I know why it was done like that, but instead of
adding to the story and making me feel for Lola, I just found it frustrating
and threw me out of the story instead.
Cricket was essentially the redeeming factor of the book. I
loved him. He was sweet and funny and added a much needed breath of fresh air
to the story. When Lola had such an extreme reaction to Cricket’s return I was
expecting to hate him, for him to have done something so awful that I wouldn’t
be able to like him. But it turned out that he hadn’t really done anything,
just been a boy and not communicated, but nothing so terrible that it deserved
the reaction Lola gave. And I loved him. I just wish that I could have
connected to Lola in the same way.
So whilst this book didn’t even remotely compare to ‘Anna’ I
did still enjoy it, just not nearly as much as I was expecting to. I’m still
very excited for the third book ‘Isla and the Happily Ever After’ which is out
next month. If you enjoyed ‘Anna and the French Kiss’ though I do recommend
giving Lola a go, because I am definitely in the minority who didn’t enjoy it
and even if you don’t connect with Lola, you’ve still got Cricket and the
reappearance of Anna and St Clair to see you through. And we've got the setup to see all of the favourites back in the next book.
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