The Boy Next Door Reviews - Portrait Reviews

The Boy Next Door by Meggin Cabot
Review by: Amanda



Her chronic tardiness aside, Mel is a very good gossip columnist, largely because she cares about the people she writes about. In fact, her compassion doesn't just lie with the rich and famous. She's one of the only people to live in a New York apartment building who actually takes an interest in and cares for her neighbors. The novel begins with her being late to work, yet again, because one of her neighbors winds up in the hospital. She attempts to track down the elderly woman's relative but, unbeknownst to Mel, winds up forming a relationship with someone masquerading as the woman's nephew instead.

The idea of mistaken identity, of one person pretending to be another, is an idea used in lots of romantic comedies with varying degrees of success. One writer who I believe writes extremely well for lies spinning out of control is Sophie Kinsella, and in this novel, Meggin Cabot does just as good a job as her. She makes the idea that one man could play two completely different roles, not entirely willingly, and is able to cover up enough of his mistakes to keep people convinced of his false persona.

At first, I wasn't all that happy with the style of the book. The story is not told in an ordinary single narrator format that most readers would be used to. It is not told in easily digestible chapters either. Instead, the novel is comprised entirely of e-mails. It is the epistolary tale for a modern age. When I first began reading, I kept waiting to get to a break, a new chapter. And I initially found the need to read the subject line and the message details with the sender's and recipient's names a nuisance. It took me about fifty pages in to get used to the idea, and shortly after that, it became second nature. Once I got used to the style, it was easy to follow along and find stopping points.

I especially enjoyed the messages that flew back and forth amongst Mel's coworkers. It's amazing that with simply a few lines here and there throughout the book, Cabot manages to give all of her minor characters full personalities. I'd like to point out though that if the two main characters were not both journalists, I don't think the novel would have worked as well. The two of them are so descriptive, use great grammar, and never fail to entertain the reader. Another good plot device that keeps the e-mails coming is their relatives not living close by, and using email more often than the telephone. Of course, today, e-mail is much more common than phone calls, and for a lot of people, it can be an easier way to communicate, especially in the case of something like inter-office memos.

Now, I've only read a few of Cabot's novels so far, but I much prefer her adult contemporary stylings (like this novel) to her young adult work. The writing is more fluid, the humor more entertaining, the story more engaging. Definitely worth checking out.