When life is stressful, it’s nice to have a light
hearted book to curl up with as the cool fall weather takes hold. The Boy is Back is the story of golf legend
Reed Stewart and the high school sweetheart he’d left behind, Becky
Flowers. After a mishap Prom night senior
year, Reed left town never to return for ten years. Becky tries to contact him through various
means, but she never hears from him again.
After her father’s death, she takes over the family moving business.
Reed comes back to town after his parents are arrested
for not paying their bill at a local eatery.
Or rather paying their bill with a stamp that they believe is worth
$400, but is only worth $2. Reed and his
two siblings find out things are much worse.
Although their parents had a lot of money, it is gone, and have become hoarders
with their home in disrepair. How will
Reed help his parents and will he be able to patch up his relationship with them
and his siblings? Ten years later, is it too late for him to have a chance with
Becky again? Does Becky want a chance with him with her business and boyfriend?
I really enjoyed The Boy is Back. Cabot’s novels are also enjoyable with fun
characters and storylines. I really like
how this book was set up as an epistolary novel – although not the letters of
an old fashioned epistolary novel, but a modern one where we get the story
through a variety of means including texts, journals, e-bay postings, interview
transcriptions, etc. It also included
pictures of items for sale (Reed’s mother is always selling cat figurines) and
of their hoarding basement (looked a little too much like my basement for
comfort). I had read and loved The Boy Next Door
(almost ten years ago) that had the same concept, but was told more through
emails at that time. I enjoyed an update
to the epistolary novel.
I also LOVED that part of the romance between Reed and
Becky is that they talk to each other with Jane Austen quotes. I love this meet
cute with Jane Austen.
“I thought I would die of disdain until Reed looked at
the book I was sneak-reading (because Government was so boring) and said, ‘There
are so few people whom I really love and still fewer of whom I think well.’
I stared at him in shock. ‘You’ve
read Pride and Prejudice?’
‘Yes, Flowers.’ He smirked. ‘I can read, you know.’
It was as if he’d peered into my brain, No my soul.”
I also loved when Reed is trying to woe Becky back
after a ten year absence, he harkens back to my favorite Austen novel, Persuasion,
which also involves an aborted romance and eight year separation by writing
this in an email.
“And despite what you may think, I have pictured us
meeting again. This is embarrassing to
admit, but for years I’ve had this fantasy that when I came back to Bloomville,
it would be as a rich man, like Captain Frederick Wentworth in
Persuasion by
Jane Austen.
Do you remember him?”
The Persuasion theme continues in a text to Becky
toward the end of the novel.
“Fine, we can do that.
As soon as you confess that you wrote, ‘You pierce my soul, I offer
myself to you again with a heart even more you own than when you almost broke
it, ten years ago’ beneath my senior photo.”
Overall, The Boy is Back is a fun story with a great
romance, and a wonderful love letter to Persuasion for any Jane Austen fans.
About The Boy is Back
• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (October 18, 2016)
In this brand-new novel from #1
New York Times bestselling author Meg Cabot, a scandal brings a young man back home to the small town, crazy family, and first love he left behind.
Reed Stewart thought he’d left all his small town troubles—including a broken heart—behind when he ditched tiny Bloomville, Indiana, ten years ago to become rich and famous on the professional golf circuit. Then one tiny post on the Internet causes all of those troubles to return . . . with a vengeance.
Becky Flowers has worked hard to build her successful senior relocation business, but she’s worked even harder to forget Reed Stewart ever existed. She has absolutely no intention of seeing him when he returns—until his family hires her to save his parents.
Now Reed and Becky can’t avoid one another—or the memories of that one fateful night. And soon everything they thought they knew about themselves (and each other) has been turned upside down, and they—and the entire town of Bloomville—might never be the same, all because The Boy Is Back.
Purchase Links
Photo by Ali Smith
About Meg Cabot
Meg Cabot was born in Bloomington, Indiana. In addition to her award-winning adult contemporary fiction, she is the author of bestselling young adult fiction, including The Princess Diaries and the Mediator series. More than twenty-five million copies of her novels for children and adults have sold worldwide. Meg lives in Key West, Florida, with her husband.
Find out more about Meg at her
website, follow her
blog, and connect with her on
Facebook and
Twitter.
