A surprising, utterly romantic companion to My Life Next Door—great for fans of Sarah Dessen and Jenny Han

Tim Mason was The Boy Most Likely To find the liquor cabinet blindfolded, need a liver transplant, and drive his car into a house.

Alice Garrett was The Girl Most Likely To . . .well, not date her little brother’s baggage-burdened best friend, for starters.

For Tim, it wouldn’t be smart to fall for Alice. For Alice, nothing could be scarier than falling for Tim. But Tim has never been known for making the smart choice, and Alice is starting to wonder if the “smart” choice is always the right one. When these two crash into each other, they crash hard.

Then the unexpected consequences of Tim’s wild days come back to shock him. He finds himself in a situation that isn’t all it appears to be, that he never could have predicted . . . but maybe should have.

And Alice is caught in the middle.

Told in Tim’s and Alice’s distinctive, disarming, entirely compelling voices, this novel is for readers of The Spectacular Now, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, and Paper Towns.

I really liked this book.

I didn’t re-read the first book before I jumped into this one so I didn’t remember all of the minor characters from that book until I dug deeper into this one. Tim Mason was Sam’s oldest friend from My Life Next Door and he was the party boy that was always getting into trouble but I remembered that I didn’t hate him. He proved to be a good friend to Sam and so I knew that I was going to like him. I just wasn’t prepared for how much I was going to love him.

I loved his crush on Alice. I loved his flirty spice attitude where Alice was concerned. I loved seeing his feelings for Alice grow into something bigger and stronger than even he was prepared for. And I loved seeing Alice crush and then grow those very same feelings…for Tim.

The entire time that I was reading this book, my heart went out to Tim. He had a domineering father, a mother who was self-involved and a sister who was crazy in her own way but at Tim’s core, he loved his family…and I loved seeing them rally behind him when he needed them most. Things just kept falling at Tim’s door and I didn’t think I could hold up under everything that was piling up but Tim surprised me with how big his heart was.

The whole thing with Cal broke my heart but Fitzpatrick did a great job of fixing that heart because the whole story ended the way that it was supposed to end. Seeing Tim connect with Cal and seeing their bond form from beginning to end made this story that much more heartwarming.

I really liked that even with everything that both kids were going through, the romance between Tim and Alice didn’t suffer. At least in my opinion. I adored their romance. It wasn’t traditional and it wasn’t perfect but in the end, it worked itself out. I loved that both Tim and Alice were able to be there for each other when nobody else could or knew how. I loved the support that they got from each other. Alice and her experience with kids and Tim with his experience with the rich. I loved that they worked their issues out and that being together made them stronger as individuals.

This was a great story from beginning to end. I enjoyed seeing the Garretts (all of them) again and it was nice to see Jase and Sam still going strong. Fitzpatrick did a great job of making me love the hell out of both Alice and Tim and I definitely recommend this book to fans of the contemporary YA romance but also of the first book in this series. It was a great and entertaining read. Loved it!

Grade: 4.5 out of 5

This book is available from Dial Books. You can purchase it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.