Book Review of My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick
My Life Next Door is a book that I checked out as a variation in my regular reading. Young adult romance is not usually my regular reading, and I was surprised at what I found.
Samantha Reed is a rich girl attending a prep school. She has a "perfect" life with her mother's trust fund and political career. Her best friend, Nan, from prep school is part of a picture perfect family: father with a successful banking job and a mother who delights in making their life more perfect with material things.
However, Samantha's life is anything but perfect. Her home and mother are cold and unfeeling. Nan's parents are too busy being a perfect family to notice their son, Tim, circling the drain in drugs and alcohol even though he's been expelled from three schools.
Next door to Samantha live the Garretts, an enormous family of eight kids that her mother despises simply for the fact that they are a large family. Samantha has been secretly watching the large family from her bedroom window for ten years, longing for such a warm and friendly life. Everything changes when Jase Garrett climbs up the lattice to her window to ask her if she needs rescuing.
The love that follows and the welcoming warmth she receives from this family fill her empty life, and while it costs her to love Jase, she gets a lot in return for herself and people she love. Her life feels full and complete until the unthinkable happens and loyalties are tested in ways she never expected.
The thing I love most about this book is that it shows how wonderful love is and also how screwed up and insane real life can get. Relationships in real life are never simple or easy, and things can completely fall apart in an instant. Rich people do not have perfect lives, and that help can come in the most unlikely of places.
I give this book a:
Samantha Reed is a rich girl attending a prep school. She has a "perfect" life with her mother's trust fund and political career. Her best friend, Nan, from prep school is part of a picture perfect family: father with a successful banking job and a mother who delights in making their life more perfect with material things.
However, Samantha's life is anything but perfect. Her home and mother are cold and unfeeling. Nan's parents are too busy being a perfect family to notice their son, Tim, circling the drain in drugs and alcohol even though he's been expelled from three schools.
Next door to Samantha live the Garretts, an enormous family of eight kids that her mother despises simply for the fact that they are a large family. Samantha has been secretly watching the large family from her bedroom window for ten years, longing for such a warm and friendly life. Everything changes when Jase Garrett climbs up the lattice to her window to ask her if she needs rescuing.
The love that follows and the welcoming warmth she receives from this family fill her empty life, and while it costs her to love Jase, she gets a lot in return for herself and people she love. Her life feels full and complete until the unthinkable happens and loyalties are tested in ways she never expected.
The thing I love most about this book is that it shows how wonderful love is and also how screwed up and insane real life can get. Relationships in real life are never simple or easy, and things can completely fall apart in an instant. Rich people do not have perfect lives, and that help can come in the most unlikely of places.
I give this book a:
Photo Credit Katherine Elizabeth
Stars Image Credit: lovethenerddesigns
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