Reading this got me even more excited for Isla and the Happily Ever After, too. I NEED IT.
So in this companion novel to AatFK, we meet sixteen year old Lola Nolan of San Francisco. Lola expresses herself in a manner that almost seems costume-y - wearing a red gingham ex-tablecloth as a dress to go on a picnic, for example. It's fantastic.
Lola's boyfriend at the start of this novel is a twenty-two year old named Max. Lola's dads don't like Max for pretty much that exact reason, so they make him come over for Sunday brunch every week as well as make Lola call every hour on the hour when they're on dates. Lola's willing to deal with these inconveniences, though, because she'll graduate soon enough and then she and Max can go on the road with his band while she designs costumes for a living. She has it all planned out.
And then Cricket Bell moves back to town.
Cricket Bell is Lola's childhood next door neighbor who has always been overshadowed by his figure skating star twin sister Calliope. (Yes, by the way, they're those Bells. As in the phone company.) Cricket and Lola were becoming pretty intense a couple years ago until miscommunications happen and each of them feels betrayed by the other.
Cut to now, when Cricket tells Lola that Calliope played them both out of jealousy and fear that Cricket was picking someone else over her. Oh, and he's still in love with Lola. Hasn't stopped for a second.
Bad time for Max to walk in, isn't it?
Cricket's reappearance into Lola's life makes her rethink a lot of her desires: is Max really the one? Do her costumes hide her or reveal her? And most importantly, can she go to the winter dance in the coolest Marie Antoinette dress possible?
Maybe the moon can help guide her to the answers.
If you're worried, Lola and the Boy Next Door doesn't suffer from the sophomore slump. Though it follows the same sort of will-they-or-won't-they pattern as AatFK, it's not an exact retelling with all the character names find-and-replaced. Lola and Anna are two distinctly different people, which is made apparent when they interact as coworkers at the local movie theater. Etienne and Cricket are also not carbon copies of each other - Cricket's far too tall, for one. (Kidding. They're very much dissimilar.)
Lola's story is also much less ethereal than Anna's can be. While Anna falls in love in Paris, widely regarded as the most romantic city in the world, Lola's story is messier and more colorful, much like San Francisco itself. Her costume-y style also shapes the events that unfold - much of the story wouldn't be possible, for example, without the Marie Antoinette dress Lola wants to make.
Overall, Lola and the French Kiss lives up to the standards Anna and the French Kiss set. It's a whirl of colors and emotions and plans that's centered around creating - both Lola's love of sewing and Cricket's engineering skills form the backbone of this novel. If Anna's the sweet, nerdy older sister, Lola's the wild yet loving middle child who might try to go off the rails sometimes but will ultimately always find her way back home. Four stars and a great desire to up my game clothing-wise.
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