 I already filmed this video once but when I went back to look at the footage my dress had come open at the boob area and so now I have it sealed shut with an earring. Hey guys so today I'm going to be filming a book talk for Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins. The first half of this video is going to be spoiler free and the second half of the video is going to be full of spoilers. Before I get to that part I'll warn you just in case you haven't read this book but until then I'm gonna be talking about stuff that you can know even if you've never read a single book in this trilogy. Lola and the Boy Next Door is the second installment in a YA contemporary trilogy by Stephanie Perkins. They are all companion novels so you don't necessarily have to read them in order. However I do believe that you get a better reading experience if you do that because as you go through characters from previous novels will show up in the later installments. So of course Anna and Etienne are in Lola and the Boy Next Door and they're actually in this book a lot more than I thought they would be. A lot of the times Anna and St. Clair kind of serve as Lola's mentors and I thought that was really nice to see them back after reading a whole book about them and their story. This book however is about a girl named Lola Martin and okay her name is short for Dolores. I don't know how you get Lola from Dolores but past that. Lola is an upcoming fashion designer and not just like regular fashion but costuming. She always wears these outlandish outfits. It's about her and her initial relationship with her boyfriend Max who is much older than her and also in a like metal band. He's really punk rock. Her neighbors come into the picture Cricket Graham Bell right? Cricket Graham Bell who is a renowned inventor and his twin sister Calliope Bell who is Olympic level figure skater are also in this book and yes based on the description of everybody in this book you can see a lot of the characters are absolutely ridiculous. It's kind of like Stephanie Perkins was spinning the special wheel trying to make all of these people different from your typical YA characters and then just went overboard but to be completely honest I didn't mind it. None of the characters seemed particularly forced into the things that they were supposed to enjoy. It felt like a bunch of really talented people just so happened to come together. This book has a lot of mixed reviews and a lot of those mixed reviews didn't come out until way after it was published because when all of the books in this trilogy first came out it was so hyped up on booktube. But now that it's been a while you can start to see some people that really didn't like this book and I completely understand. I get it if you didn't like this book I can see how you wouldn't but I personally ended up liking it a lot despite the problems that it has. There are some problematic elements that were in this book that were also in Anna and the French Kiss that I really disagree with. I disagree with the way both of these relationships were formed but I could still look past that and enjoy these books for what they are. They are absolutely addictive. These books are just so easy to read. You can fly through them. They're great for pulling you out of reading slumps because you just want to read them. So if you haven't read this book yet and if you haven't read Anna and the French Kiss yet so far I have to say I would recommend them. You just have to kind of look past certain things and I don't mean that in a way as pretend those things don't exist. I just mean come to terms with the fact that they're there and the fact that real people do the same thing and it's not good but it's something that happens. So that's all of the non-spoiler stuff that I have to say about this book. So we're going to move on into the spoiler section. So now that all the people who haven't read this book yet are gone we can talk crap about them. I'm actually not gonna do that. That's kind of mean but I am gonna talk crap about some of the things that happened in this book so let me reiterate I did like this book but I have some problems with it. I'm gonna touch on those a little bit later because I tried to keep my thoughts and as chronological in order as possible. We're gonna start off with the fact that Lola is already like from the get-go pinned as a very naive character. She gets into a relationship with someone who is like six years older than her. Max when they started dating thought Lola was not a minor but on their first date he learns that she's like six years younger than him something like that and he continues to date her despite that and Lola despite their huge age gap thinks that they're going to be together forever and I'm not sure if that means marriage in her mind but she does believe that they're going to run away together and have this beautiful perfect life where she does fashion by day and then Max does music by night and like that's just not realistic, okay? I mean none of this book is realistic at all but uh that especially. Max knows he's too old for Lola. You can tell that Max knows he's too old for Lola. He knows he's too old for the brunches and the high school dances. He's too old for Lola's friends and it's not because like Lola is beneath him in any way. It's not that she's worse than him. It's just that they are at different stages in their life and so they need to be doing different things, you know? Max doesn't need to be forced into all of these teenage activities and Lola doesn't need to be dragged into all of these very adult situations. When I say that I am not specifically talking about sex because it is said that Lola and Max bang every on it. She's old enough to make her own decisions. She just shouldn't be doing that with someone who is an actual consenting adult. Eventually Lola does figure out that Max doesn't really like her for who she is. He likes her for the fact that she is a little girl. I don't know. I guess he just thinks that it's scandalous. The relationship is taboo, something that not a lot of people have and so he's special in that aspect. It's something risky. It's something that a metal band boy would do. Metal band, man, he's old. So she pretty much figures that out for herself and after that she breaks up with Max but she should have broken up with Max a whole lot sooner. Like a whole lot sooner because Stephanie Perkins has a thing for cheating. She has a thing for both emotional, disloyalty and physical disloyalty and that bothers me. Let's back up to Anna and the French kiss, okay? If you haven't read that book, mute your screen for a second or something. But Anna and the French kiss, Anna and Etienne get together and they kiss, they flirt all the time. Anna and Etienne sleep in the same bed for like three nights in a row and throughout all of this Etienne is dating a girl named Ellie who is his long-term girlfriend. Their relationship was born out of cheating but from that book we got to see it from Anna's point of view where she's pining after Etienne who is dating someone but in Lola and the Boy Next Door we see from the dating person's point of view. Lola is the one that's dating someone and Cricket is the one who is not. So we get to view the relationship born out of cheating scenario from a different point of view this time. I understand that as a teenager it is very hard to sort out your feelings. I'm 16. Hello, I'm 16. I understand that sometimes you don't know what the heck is going on around you and I get it. But that does not mean that it is right or fair to let that happen. You still need to be reasonable and take other people into account. If you are so confused that you are hurting other people then you might want to try and get other people out of the mess if you can if that makes sense. Something that I loved about this book was how much more reasonable Cricket was than Anna. Cricket respects the fact that Lola is in a relationship not perfectly but still he respects the fact enough to turn her down when she tries to kiss him. You know, they hold back. They have boundaries that they think that they shouldn't cross. At one point in time Cricket and Lola even get in a fight and he's like, what do you want from me? Do you want me to just pine after you forever because that's what's going to happen? You can't have me dying here seeing you dating this other dude while you date this other dude. Okay, that's just not fair and it's not right. And I really appreciated Cricket doing that. I really appreciated Cricket just as a character in general. He's so sweet. He's so kind and he's super easy to read. There is no confusing what Cricket wants. He tells Anna from the get-go. Anna, he tells Lola how he feels from the get-go. And so you know, there is no confusing. Everyone seems to encourage Lola's emotional disloyalty except for Calliope. Like the two dads, Andy and Nathan, try and set up Lola and Cricket when they take them on this like picnic date thing. Initially, Lola's friend Lindsey is like, remember you have a boyfriend but eventually she's like, I hate Max, uh, date Cricket. So like the only voice of reason that you get is Calliope being like, stay away from my brother. It's hurting him a lot that you're doing this except she says it in the bitchiest way possible. The only thing that I really liked about Relationship Born of Cheating aspect featured in both books is the fact that St. Clair got to be a real mentor to Lola. He got to tell her, hey, I went through the same thing. Here's how I handle it. Here's what you need to do. I just really appreciated that. I thought it was good to see them helping each other out and it was good to see St. Clair be like, this is wrong. You need to stop. I also liked that Lola realized that she was being a piece of crap and she was wrong. She kind of tried to apologize to Max even, even though he was terrible to her when they broke up. She went back and tried to apologize to him for being a bad girlfriend. And then he was just like, well, I slept with some lady, which was terrible on his part because Lola was trying there. And then she waited to hook up with Cricket, get together with Cricket, whatever. A lot of people don't like the phrase like, you need to earn your boyfriend. You need to earn your friends. But in this case, I was all for it because she realized that she had messed up in the past and she wanted to be a better person for Cricket because Cricket was a good person. She wanted to be a good person too. And that's like, that's what you need in relationship. You need a relationship that is going to make you strive to be the best possible person you can be. And that is what Cricket is making her do. Really try and be a better version of herself. She tried to earn his trust by waiting and proving that she was being a better person. She tried to earn her parents' trust back. She didn't just go like, I hate my dads and then run off and hide in a room forever. She even felt like something of relationship with her mom, even though it was very weak. It wasn't Lola's fault that it was weak though. Her mom sucks. So yeah, I guess what I can say that I really liked about this book was Cricket existing and the family aspect. I liked Lola's family. I liked her fathers. I liked how she interacted with her fathers. They were good parents. They were never unreasonable with Lola and Lola, for the most part, wasn't unreasonable with him. Lola's birth mother is still around sometimes and she is a deadbeat mom. And you know what? That's something that happens sometimes. It sucks that that happens, but that's something that happens. And so it was just another realistic element in this story. The funniest thing that happened in the whole book is when her dress is all ready to go. Lola is all ready to go to the winter ball. And one of her dads is like, I'm trying really hard not to call you fabulous because that's too stereotypical. The dance scene was just really cute too. Another unrealistic thing that happened. Cricket gives Lola this box and it's the planets and they move around each other. But hey, that was cute. And then Cricket and Lola make out a lot and that was also interesting. That was nice to see. So yeah, ultimately I really liked this book and I'm really excited to read Ila and happily ever after. I hope that the relationship comes out of something a little bit different in Ila. I'm also really excited to see how they work in St. Clair and Anna as well as Lola and Cricket into the story because Ila takes place in New York, I think. So what I think is gonna happen, they're all gonna like pack up to go see Calliope as she figure skates. And so they're gonna like have to go through New York to get to the Calliope. And I'm just really excited about that happening. So that's all that I have to say today in this video. If you liked this video, then like this video. It's fairly straightforward. Also subscribe if you want to see my thoughts on anything else. I'll see you all in my next video. Goodbye.