#TBRChallenge 2024: The Boy Is Back

The Book: The Boy Is Back by Meg Cabot

The Particulars: Contemporary Women's Fiction / Romance Adjacent, Book 4 in the Boy series, In Print, 2016

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: I'm a fan of Cabot's YA Princess Diaries series and I snagged a copy of this ARC from work. Yes, I'm aware the book came out in 2016.  Anyway, the ARC has been in my TBR all this time and it fit perfectly with this month's Once More With Feeling theme, so here we are.

The Review: A couple of things right out of the gate - while this is book four in a series, the series seems very loosely connected.  I have not read the previous Boy books and did just fine reading this one as a stand-alone.  Also, remember when books with illustrated covers actually meant "romantic comedy?"  This one definitely takes some broad strokes and while aspects of the story weren't always "funny" to me (more on that in a bit) - it was an enjoyable reading experience once I reminded myself to not take it so bloody seriously.

Reed Stewart is a golf pro whose game has been on the skids and now he's summoned back home to Bloomville, Indiana - a place he left 10 years ago and never looked back from.  His parents, who disowned him and threw him out on his ear, are in serious hot water.  They tried to pay for a dinner at a local casual dining establishment (think Applebee's) with a postage stamp they told the waitress was worth $100.  Yeah, turns out it was only worth $4, the cops were called, and charges have been pressed.  This is just the latest in a series of incidents with his parents.  Feral cats setting up camp around their home, out of control "collecting" turned to hording, and turns out...they're broke.  Flat broke. His older sister, Trimble, has washed her hands of them and basically tells the middle brother, Marshall, and his wife, Carly, that it's their problem now - hence begging Reed to come home after a 10 year exile.  If nothing else they need his help financially to sort out the mess.

The fly in the ointment? The girl Reed left behind, Becky Flowers. The night Reed's father disowned him happened to be their prom night. Teenage drinking, a golf cart, and a country club swimming pool later - Becky has a dislocated shoulder, Reed hightails it out of town, and she never hears from him again. Now running her father's moving company, Becky specializes in helping seniors downsize and get their affairs in order - which is how she enters back into Reed's orbit. His sister-in-law, Carly, hires Becky to help sort out the mess with his parents. She is also dating the owner of the local wine and cheese shop, although it's a relationship on life support by the time Reed blows back into town.

This is a epistolary retelling of Austen's Persuasion, with the story told through emails, text messages, and group chats. It works surprisingly well and was compulsively readable.  I tore through the majority of the book in a couple hours one evening.

What doesn't work as well?  There are uncomfortable underpinnings to the humor. The situation that Reed's parents are in is not a laughing matter, but is played that way through the tone and some light wackiness. It's a little squirm-inducing at times. Also some of the humor is aging rapidly - like Reed's niece who is obsessed with wearing her Chief Massasoit costume (although there's some funny bits about parenting and cultural appropriation during those scenes).  Again, the only way this really works is if you don't take it seriously, which is generally easier for me to do with a Cabot novel because she tends to keep her tone so light and frothy.

While there is a second chance romance in this book, there's also a fair number of secondary characters and it takes a while for Reed and Becky to cross each others' paths again.  Also, while it was FANTASTIC that Becky and Reed pay lip service to 10 years being a long time, they're not kids anymore, they've both grown up, yada yada yada - they still are incredibly hung up on each other and fall right back into a relationship without too much heavy lifting. It's all right as rain in the end without the reader seeing any real "work" for the two characters to get there.

Is this a good book I would recommend?  Well, it depends. I certainly had issues with it, but it kept me entertained and it hit my brain candy sweet spot.  I don't have a burning desire to necessarily go back and read the other books in this series, but I also don't regret reading this one - if that makes any sense whatsoever.  I had a good time reading it even with the quibbles, even though it didn't change my life.  Oh, and I liked the ending. The resolution to what's been going on with Reed's parents and how Reed and Becky address their new relationship (he's in California, she's in Indiana).  He's not doing all the taking and she ain't doing all the giving.  That was good enough for me.

Final Grade = B-