Name: The Next Door Boys
ISBN: 9781599559100

Jolene B. Perry

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.

The Next Door Boys

I've been wanting to check this out for quite some time now, and imagine my surprise when a few pages in, I found out it was Mormon fiction. I was really glad because I've never tried that before, and I'm a Mormon myself. 

Leigh is a wonderful character. She just went through a year fighting cancer, and now she's going to college with her brother to study and hopefully live an independent, normal life away from her parents. She's described as "beautiful, in all the sense of the word" and I find that she really does live up to it. I admired her character because she was very strong and hardworking in spite of her liabilities, in spite of her problems. She does what she can to live normally, and she wants to leave the past behind her. She struggles with the fact that she can no longer have children, and I love how the Spirit makes her strong. I admire how religion was such a big part of her life, in the book, and how she handles the decisions she makes. But she's not perfect, and she stumbles a little through part of the story. 

The romance is really really good. It's not the cliche love at first sight, or the all consuming lusty kind of love, but it comes gradually and slowly, the kind that you never notice until you do. They are friends at first, and they have the kind of friendship that is sweet and inspiring. 

I love her attitude towards love. She's not looking for romance, and she doesn't believe in the kind of love we read about these days, almost to the point of cynicism. Here's a direct quote from her:

“I love you so much that I’ll hang out with you in the backyard while you’re wearing your grungiest sweatpants and haven’t showered in two days. I’ll call you beautiful and mean it. I’ll be with you forever because I want to be not because we have to be.” It was the little things that mattered not the big ones.

Her romantic interest is troubled and imperfect, but he's starting to fix his life and patch up his mistakes and he's really attractive in a nice guy kind of way. All in all this was a really nice and sweet read. Very light and enjoyable. Highly recommended.

The Next Door Boys

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