Friday, December 01, 2023

So come on darling, feel your spirits rise: THE NEIGHBOR FAVOR.

The Neighbor FavorThe Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm so glad I read this for my A to Z owned book challenge!

Lily Greene feels inadequate compared to her parents and sisters. She wants to be a children's book editor but is stuck as an assistant in nonfiction to a terrible boss. So she strikes up a correspondence with her favorite fantasy author--finding solace as the two begin communicating frequently via email. It seems like they may become more than email pals when he suddenly ghosts her.

This is a really cute read, completely propelled by the lovely and charming Lily, who carries the whole book. I found Nick, her love interest, to be an incredibly frustrating character. Nick moves in down the hall from Lily, and the two feel an instant attraction. An author writing under a pen name, he soon realizes Lily was the person he was writing to via his author website, but (of course) he keeps it from her, and (of course) he agrees to set her up with someone else instead.

So much miscommunication ensues and angst follows. Nick has a huge inability to move past the damage his parents caused him and just act, which made me want to scream sometimes. But I still managed to enjoy him and Lily together. And Lily was great! She was a sweet heroine who worked hard to find herself. The book portrayed her relationships with her sisters very well, as well as Nick's friendship with his agent (and college friend) Marcus and Marcus' husband. There are lots of little tidbits about publishing and the writing world. Lily and Nick's quirky neighbors give us some much needed lighthearted fun.

The book starts off being told solely via Nick and Lily's emails--often an irritating format, it worked quite nicely here. Eventually we go back to narrative form and while there's the annoyances with Nick, this is still a cute read with diverse characters and a fun story. 3.75 stars.

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