Book Reviews! The Boys Next Door and Endless Summer!

Title/ Author: The Boys Next Door by Jennifer Echols
Publisher/ Year: Simon Pulse, 2007.
How I Read It:  Paperback (in a set with Endless Summer)
Why I Read It:  I read and LOVED The Summer series by Jenny Han and I saw that this story was similar so I gave it a shot.
Rating:  4 stars out of 5














Title/ Author:  Endless Summer by Jennifer Echols
Publisher/ Year:  Simon Pulse, 2010.
How I Read It:  Paperback (in a set with The Boys Next Door)
Why I Read It:  The Boys Next Door  was a great book & I thought the sequel would be worth it.
Rating:  2 stars out of 5 (IT WASN'T WORTH IT)


These books are the only books in this series by Jennifer Echols.  I got this from my library.  It was a two in one & I couldn't resist.

Summary from Goodreads: Cute, available, and one cabin over....
Lori lives for summertime on the lake. She spends all season wakeboarding, swimming, and hanging with her friends—including the two hotties in the house next door. With the Vader brothers, Lori's always been one of the guys. 
But while Lori and the "baby" brother, Adam, are inseparable friends, she can't deny a secret crush on Sean, the older Vader boy. This year Sean's been paying Lori a lot of attention, and not in a brotherly way.
But just as Lori decides to prove to Sean she's girlfriend material, she realizes that her role as girlfriend to Adam may be even more important. And by trying so hard for the perfect summer romance, she could be going way overboard...

Quick Summary for those who have not read it yet:
The Boys Next Door was such a great read and it made me think about summer and it just felt right.  I didn't really like the characters as much as I would have wanted to because they were super immature and I couldn't relate to them.  But overall, the story was cute and it ended amazingly and I recommend for anyone who loves romance.

Endless Summer on the other hand, I didn't really care for.  TOO MUCH DRAMA AND JEALOUSY AND IT WAS  UNECESSARILY SEXUAL THAT I COULD JUMP OFF A CLIFF. I GET IT. THEY LOVE EACH OTHER.  If you read the first book, I strongly recommend that you not read this book.  It will change your perspectives on the characters and I felt like it was not needed at all.  

The Review:
TBND: It was a cute story.  I liked a lot of things, like the overall plot, and how what I thought was going to happen, didn't happen.  I thought it was going to be like The Summer I Turned Pretty but the books were completely different.  Sure, they were similar, but they had different plots.  To be honest, I didn't like Lori.  She annoyed me throughout the book for the fact that she was just too much for me.  Adam was a great part of this book.  He was the younger brother, had ADHD, and he was in love with Lori.  Lori was only pretending to go out with Adam to make his older brother Sean jealous, but she found herself falling in love with Adam instead.  Adam really cares about Lori and I felt a lot of sympathy towards him.  It's hard to love someone who doesn't love you back (at first).  But I loved the things he did for Lori.  Because Adam has ADHD, he's super impulsive.  That was a unique thing about his character that made him different from a lot of characters I have read, and Lori saw past that and loved him anyway.  It was a cute relationship and I really enjoyed the plot.  It was a page turner and was great if you're into summer love stories :)

ES: Okay, brace yourselves.  I did NOT like this book.  I should have paid attention to the warning at the beginning of the second book where it said, "This book is for all the readers of The Boys Next Door who asked me to write a sequel. I would not and could not have done this without you." I always get a bit iffy about books where the author didn't plan to write a sequel and the fans wanted it. It's like those fans who want Suzanne Collins to write another book for The Hunger Games after Mockingjay. Eh. 

The Boys Next Door had a great ending. When I read Endless Summer, my thought throughout the whole book was that, "This should not have been written." I was content with the characters before, but frankly after reading Endless Summer, I found the characters a lot more annoying. The only characters I could probably cope with were McGillicuddy and Tammy. Otherwise, everyone else just got on my nerves. I wasn't a huge fan of Lori in both books, and I only like Adam in the first book.  In the second book, I know Adam has ADHD, which makes him more impulsive, but I'm sorry, his behavior and impulsiveness was too much for me.  It was overdone.  I love Adam, but the jealousy and sexual stuff was a little much.

One of the only things I liked in this book was that the characters learned maturity and developed that way. I guess I had higher expectations, because before I read this, earlier in they year I read The Summer I Turned Pretty and loved it. When I discovered this was a similar story, I wanted to read it because of how much I loved the Summer Series.

So basically YAY to The Boys Next Door and NAY to Endless Summer.