In this intensely romantic novel from Swoon Reads, Maddy falls in love with her skating partner—who is also the boy next door.
Maddy Spier has been in love with the boy next door forever. As his figure skating partner she spends time in his arms every day. But she’s also seen his arms around other girls—lots of other girls.
Gabe can’t imagine skating with anyone but Maddy, and together they have a real chance at winning some serious gold medals. So, he’s determined to keep thinking of her like a sister. After all, he’s never had a romantic relationship that lasted for more than two weeks.
But when their coach assigns a new romantic skating program, everything changes. Will this be the big break that Maddy’s been hoping for or the big breakup that Gabe has always feared.
ABOUT KATIE
Jaime’s Thoughts
The Boy Next Door by Katie Van Ark
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Dear The Boy Next Door… I saw you, and I instantly knew that you and I would click. But I don’t know what happened. You lost me around the 75% mark and there was just no going back.
This completely frustrates me because you have so many things that I love and so much potential…
Mady, a talented, smart and driven girl who knows what she wants and goes after it.
Gabe, a talented, smart boy who has has a playboy reputation in the relationship department, but deep down that’s not really who he is and he’s super sweet.
A life-long friendship and skating partnership between these two have them spending long hours and days together and they know more about each other than anyone else in their lives.
You know I absolutely love when the couple I’m supposed to be cheering for are friends first and foremost, and that’s exactly what we have here, and I really liked that aspect of the story. I also really enjoyed that most of the story revolved around their skating and the goals they have for themselves. It was interesting to hear a lot of the skating lingo, even though I don’t know what most of it means.
But like I said, around 3/4 of the way through the story, a few things happen that just don’t work for me. I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but Mady’s parents are keeping secrets, Gabe’s parents are keeping secrets, Mady is keeping secrets, Gabe is keeping secrets and even Chris & Kate the BFF’s are keeping secrets. Mady who I really liked at the beginning really started to grate on me towards the end. It was frustrating.
And the ending… Let’s just say that Disney movies have nothing on this.
I also feel like most of the book has these two competing in the skating world and I felt a bit like part of that was a bit unfinished.
Overall you were a cute story The Boy Next Door, but ultimately you just didn’t completely work as well for me by the time I got to the end.
Thanks to Swoon Reads for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest thoughts.
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