Abandoned by Booklikes

I started and stopped My LIfe Next Door a few weeks ago. I had to re-read the beginning again since I honestly didn't remember a lot about the book at that point but I think I initially just chalked this up to another young adult novel that I probably was not going to enjoy. I have to say that I really did like this novel and found it to be a very good 3.5 star read.

Taking place in Connecticut, this story focuses on 17 year old Samantha Reed. Coming from a well to do family as well as being a Senator's daughter has its own challenges for Samantha. The summer before her senior year of college has Samantha thinking she will just work at the local restaurant and be a lifeguard two days out of the week. However, her life changes when she finally gets to officially meet the family next door, the Garretts. Being told from a young age to stay away from the Garretts by her mother Samantha has watched and envied them from her bedroom window. She gets involved with Jase Garrett and finally starts to realize what she has been missing this entire time from her closed off family.

I think that Ms. Fitzpatrick wrote Samantha just the right way. Being 17 and in lust and then love with the boy next door could have just been a cliched story but I found that Samantha and Jase's story was very well done.

I think a lot of young adult novels when portraying first love don't actually make me feel the couple is in love with each other. However, I felt that from Samantha when it came to Jase and vice versa.

Additionally, I thought that all of the characters except for Samantha's mother and her mother's campaign manager Clay were written as three dimensional living breathing people. All of the Garretts had their own personalities and though the family was a bit quirky I thought that it worked very well.

The reason why I did give this book 3.5 stars was that after a while it felt like everything humanly possible was being thrown at Samantha in this book.

And I for one think that there was enough going on with Samantha secretly dating and trying to hide her relationship with Jase that she then had to find out her best friend Nan's secret, help out Nan's brother Tim, deal with her mother, etc. It all became just a bit too much. There is a plot that erupts in this book that I thought was super farfetched and it caused me to roll my eyes a lot. I mean there was already so much going on that this plot point did not need to happen at all.

I honestly wish that Ms. Fitzpatrick had focused more on Samantha and Nan's changing relationship in this book since that part really did intrigue me a lot more. To have Samantha realizing that the best friend she thought she had was silently judging her and doing all of this other stuff threw her as it would me.

To have both girls in relationships and have one of them spiraling out of control while one was totally in love with her boyfriend was a nice contrast.

I definitely enjoyed and would recommend to other young adult readers.