Waiting on Wednesday

"Waiting On Wednesday" is a weekly event, originally started by Jill at Breaking the Spine , that highlights upcoming book releases everyone is waiting on...hence the title. This week's pick is Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins. Here is the description from Goodreads:

"For budding costume designer Lola Nolan, the more outrageous, the outfit—more sparkly, more fun, more wild—the better. But even though Lola’s style is outrageous, she’s a devoted daughter and friend with some big plans for the future. And everything is pretty perfect (right down to her hot rocker boyfriend) until the dreaded Bell twins move back into the house next door.

When the family returns and Cricket—a gifted inventor and engineer—steps out from his twin sister’s shadow and back into Lola’s life, she must finally reconcile a lifetime of feelings for the boy next door."

Did I ever tell you just how much I loved Anna and the French Kiss? Oh yes, I did here. I fell in love with the characters and I thought the story was fantastic. I can't recommend that book highly enough. So when I heard Stephanie was writing another book, of course it was going on my wish list. A lot of people seem to think that Lola and the Boy Next Door is a sequel. It's not. Lola is a companion novel to Anna and I take that to mean that they compliment each other in some way and there may be one or more characters from Anna in Lola.

I like the idea of falling for the boy next door and of course you could argue that it's all been done before but remember this. It's not the idea that is important but the execution of the idea. I love Stephanie's writing style and so I'm excited to see how she will keep it fresh for the reader. I'm a little concerned about the name "Cricket" but if it's explained as a nickname then fine. Also, does it really matter? Sometimes when you're reading a story you just get used to the names anyway.

Once again, I think the cover is really cute and continues the sort of theme/look that Anna gave us. I really like the purple hair of the girl on the cover :)

Lola and the Boy Next Door is published on 29th September, 2011 and I shall be pre-ordering. I'm still campaigning for a UK publisher as I can't believe no one has snapped these books up yet. You can still order the US version from online sellers though and I'll be doing this anyway as it's a hardback *grin*.