The Boy Is Back

by Meg Cabot

Overview

In this brand-new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Meg Cabot, a scandal brings a young man back home to the small town, crazy family, and first love he left behind.

Reed Stewart thought he’d left all his small town troubles—including a broken heart—behind when he ditched tiny Bloomville, Indiana, ten years ago to become rich and famous on the professional golf circuit.  Then one tiny post on the Internet causes all of those troubles to return . . . with a vengeance.

Becky Flowers has worked hard to build her successful senior relocation business, but she’s worked even harder to forget Reed Stewart ever existed. She has absolutely no intention of seeing him when he returns—until his family hires her to save his parents.

Now Reed and Becky can’t avoid one another—or the memories of that one fateful night.  And soon everything they thought they knew about themselves (and each other) has been turned upside down, and they—and the entire town of Bloomville—might never be the same, all because The Boy Is Back.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062669803
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/18/2016
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	608,997
File size:	29 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

MEG CABOT’s many books for both adults and teens have included numerous #1 New York Times bestsellers, with more than twenty-five million copies sold worldwide. Her Princess Diaries series was made into two hit films by Disney, with a third movie coming soon. Meg currently lives in Key West, Florida, with her husband and various cats.

Hometown:

New York, New York

Place of Birth:

Bloomington, Indiana

Education:

B.A. in fine arts, Indiana University, 1991

Website:

http://www.megcabot.com

Editorial Reviews

08/29/2016
Bestseller Cabot’s novel, told entirely through documents such as emails and transcripts, concerns smalltown Indiana woman Becky Flowers, whose ex-boyfriend Reed Stewart returns to Bloomville after 10 years away as a famous pro golfer. Reed’s parents find themselves making headlines after news of their attempt to pay for a meal with a postage stamp. While Reed’s sister-in-law Carly insists that his parents are senile hoarders, Reed and his brother, Marshall, argue that they’re merely eccentric. Reed’s unpleasant and litigious sister, Trimble, appears to have sinister motives for enabling their parents’ issues, but almost everyone else agrees that they need to pare down and move to warmer climes. Cabot’s plot is driven by convenient coincidence: Becky happens to be a specialist in helping elderly people move. She and Reed still clearly have the hots for each other, and the presence of Becky’s current boyfriend, Graham, is essentially inconsequential. Another old chestnut, the inability for the would-be lovers to communicate their true feelings for one another, is also thrown into the mix and drags out the story. Cabot’s method of storytelling, though clever, runs into problems when it turns clunkily to inevitable exposition. The author does a good job of portraying the sixth-grade mean-girl mentality of living in the town where you grew up; the characters are almost 30 but still talk about high school like it was yesterday. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

I loved The Boy is Back. Wit, warmth, humor and romance, this book has all the elements of a Meg Cabot book.” — Lauren Graham, New York Times bestselling author of Someday, Someday, Maybe

From the Publisher

I loved The Boy is Back. Wit, warmth, humor and romance, this book has all the elements of a Meg Cabot book.

Lauren Graham

2016-10-05
A humiliating internet post sends golf pro Reed Stewart home to help his parents out of a mess.Cabot (Remembrance, 2016, etc.) tells the story of an estranged adult son returning home for the first time in a decade to assist his siblings with their aging parents. The once-prominent Judge Stewart and his wife have always been a little eccentric but have recently gone off the deep end in their Grey Gardens–style manor complete with a collection of antique gavels, old newspapers, and stray animals. They’ve also found themselves on the wrong side of the law by accidentally skipping out on their dinner bill at a local chain restaurant, ironically named Shenanigans. The judge thought he was leaving the waitress a generous tip when he placed a collectible postage stamp on the table; instead it was worth less than a fountain drink. Their foible finds its way online, leaving them laughingstocks facing prison time. Using the tired convention of telling a story entirely through emails, text messages, and diary entries, Cabot has created a family comedy that manages to be both meandering and frenetic but rarely funny. Reed and his siblings ping furious barbs that ring hollow and forced and seem to serve the sole function of filling pages, not engaging readers in a story they will care about. Will the Stewarts go to prison? Will Reed get back together with the ex-girlfriend he inexplicably abandoned after their high school prom ended with an accident that landed their golf cart in a pool? Getting the answers to these questions isn’t worth the time and energy it takes to read this sophomoric fluff. Like the text thread you wish you’d never been included in, this one is best deleted.

Kirkus Reviews