tiny pink books

The Queen of Babble
by Meg Cabot
What is up with me and Meg Cabot?  I know, I know.  I recently read The Boy Next Door and was disappointed by the inane plot and the ridiculous characters.  Well, yeah…I was disappointed, but I was also secretly pleased with the refreshing hibernation that was given to my mind each morning on my commute as I read.  So onward, I delved, into the work of Meg Cabot.
The Queen of Babble is about Lizzie, a recent college graduate (or non-graduate, due to technicalities) who is off to England for the summer to visit her suave British boyfriend, Andrew.  Only, things don’t go so well with Andrew, who turns out to be not-so-suave, and Lizzie finds herself traveling alone by train to France to meet up with her best friends who are spending the summer at a fairytale chateau.  On the way to France, Lizzie meets a handsome young stranger to whom she babbles her story to, embarrassing details and all.  Except…it turns out that the handsome stranger is a friend of a friend and it staying at the very same chateau.  It goes on.  There’s romance, complete with simple, formulaic obstacles, and drama ahead.
The story of Queen of Babble is silly and fluffy, without much dramatic (or intellectual!) substance.  And yet…the book is fun to read, the characters are likable enough, and I finished the book with no regrets.  My only issues are that the story is extremely formulaic and that this book suffers, though not as badly, the same issue as many of Cabot’s other books in that it struggles to find a place between a teenager’s and young adult woman’s perspective.  I don’t want to give too much away, but in the first page or two of the book, Lizzie is babbling with much ado about her boyfriend Andrew and how *gasp* his tongue has been in her mouth.  Later, however, she has sex without even a trace of the giggly, ohmigod fanfare.  Aside from those issues, however, Cabot has managed to create a likable set of characters to pull this one off…for chicklit readers anyway.  I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone seeking a deep of thoughtful read though.  Cleary, this is a sumertime beach book if there ever was one.

The Boy Next Door
by Meg Cabot

This book has earned its place as my new most embarrassing book to read in public to date.  I made a special point to fold the pages of this book over, hiding the cheesy cover which seemed to scream the announcement “Yes I read mindless, fluffy chicklit!”  I guess I wouldn’t have been so embarrassed to be reading this book if it had not been for the general low quality of the entire concept. The Boy Next Door is a romantic story Mel, young gossip columnist for a New York newspaper, who ends up falling in love with John, a crime reporter and all around cool guy from a wealthy family…only get this, due to totally pointless and silly circumstances, John is forced to conceal his real identity from Mel, resulting in a web of lies.  Oh yeah and did I mention that the entire novel is told through emails to and from the main characters and their friends?  Yup.  Are you starting to understand my embarrassment in reading this book?

So there’s several problems with this book, most of which can be summed up by the statement that another reader scrawled on the title page of the copy I read from the public library:  “This book is stupid.”  Meg Cabot has written many young adult novels, some of which I’ve enjoyed in the same fluffy, don’t make me think kind of way that I had hoped to enjoy this one.  Only, The Boy Next Door is not a YA novel.  It’s sort of awkwardly in the middle.  The characters are in their mid to late twenties and appear to have grown up careers, apartments, etc.   They are supposed to be adults…albeit young ones.  The real problem with The Boy Next Door (aside from the obvious fact that it is written in the whole email format!) is that the characters behave like teenagers.  It makes little sense why grown ups, with real problems, real jobs, and real life experience, would act so silly.  Even teenagers would have more sense than the characters in this book!  The main problem of the book (the mistaken identity thing) isn’t the least bit plausible because any grown man like John would have cleared up the whole silly thing immediately.  Almost all of the problems in this book stem from that.  The characters feel very one dimensional and are either extremely stupid or extremely immature, neither of which works out to an enjoyable novel.  At the same time, I did read this cover to cover, perhaps because it was the only book in my bag while I was riding the train last week or perhaps because, even though I felt insulted as a reader by this book, I ended up getting a tiny bit sucked into the inane story…just to see where it went.

How To Be Popular by Meg Cabot
Harper Teen, 2008

I actually read this a few months ago and promptly forgot everything about it.  How To Be Popular is a standard, disposable piece of YA fluff.  It’s simple, it’s quick, and overall, it’s enjoyable if you have no expectations of reading something fantastic (or even memorable, in this case).

How To Be Popular is about Steph Landry, an average, yet lovable highschooler in a small town.  Although she is far from friendless, she is not at all popular, mostly due to an embarrassing junior high school incident that the queen bee of the school will never let Steph live down.   Basically, the story revolves around Steph, who finds a self help book about how to be popular, trying to change her status while facing a few other friend and family situations.

There’s nothing special abotu How To Be Popular, yet it is exactly what it should be–fun, light-hearted, and sugary.  The characters in this book are nice teenagers with nice, easy to solve problems, which is why I think it would be a good tween book (as opposed to full on teens, who would probably snicker at poor little Steph and her popularity problems).  Readers looking for substance should go elsewhere, but for readers seeking tween fluff, How To Be Popular will fit the bill.