Review: The Boy Most Likely To by Huntley Fitzpatrick

Publisher: Dial Books
Release date: August 18, 2015
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0803741421
Pages: 425
Goodreads || Book Depository

Tim Mason was The Boy Most Likely To:

• Find the liquor cabinet blindfolded
• Need a liver transplant
• 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 “smart” is always right. When these two crash into each other, they crash hard.

Then the unexpected consequences of Tim’s wild days come back to haunt him. He finds himself in a situation 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 return to the setting of My Life Next Door is a love story about failing first, trying again, and having to decide whether to risk it all once more.

MY THOUGHTS

Huntley Fitzpatrick still hasn’t disappointed me yet. This book was real and raw. It was heartwarming and heartbreaking in the best ways, and reminded me why I love the contemporary genre so much.

The Boy Most Likely To is a companion/sequel to My Life Next Door. I’d definitely recommend reading My Life Next Door first. The Boy Most Likely To contains some spoilers, which might ruin your reading experience of My Life Next Door if you decide to pick it up later. Because nearly all of the characters in The Boy Most Likely To have appeared previously in My Life Next Door, this book lacks a little bit of character building so you won’t get the back stories of each character unless you’ve read My Life Next Door. For those of you who have read My Life Next Door and wanted to see more of Jase and Sam, you’ll get that in this book. You see a lot of Sam and Jase separately but they do appear a couple of times together.

The Boy Most Likely To is my least favourite out of all of Huntley Fitzpatrick’s books, but not by much. My Life Next Door and What I Thought Was True were just so perfect, and I don’t think The Boy Most Likely To reached the same level of greatness. But I still enjoyed it very much and the story had me completely engrossed. Huntley Fitzpatrick’s writing just sucks me in. Her words are so easy to read but complex and impactful at the same time.

What I loved most about this book were the family elements that it explored. For me, I enjoyed this more than the romance between Tim and Alice. We get to see so many different types of families in this book: Alice’s chaotic but loving family and Tim’s cold and almost dysfunctional family, among others. I loved that the book explores all of these, and the idea that your family isn’t only the one you were born into but also the one you create for yourself.

This book is about real every day problems that we all go through. There isn’t a true happily ever after at the end because nothing is certain in life…and life just goes on. I like that The Boy Most Likely To highlights that we don’t need to be perfect and we’re allowed to have issues – we just need to believe in our own strength and have a couple of people in our lives who believe in us.

I really liked that this wasn’t a ‘bad boy turns good after meeting a girl’ kind of story. There is a lot of real character development in Tim and he wants to get better for himself, and not necessarily for the sake of others. I appreciated that the book emphasises that it’s not always easy to come back from being a screw up and that there are consequences to your actions. I thought Tim was also a refreshing change from Huntley’s other male leads. Jase from My Life Next Door and Cassidy from What I Thought Was True were both just very, very nice boys (who I want to marry and have a million babies with). It was kind of nice to have somebody who I wasn’t drawn to at the beginning grow on me as the book progressed. And I love how well the author is able to create complicated and layered characters.

I did have a little bit of an issue with the dual perspectives. It wasn’t badly done but I would have much preferred to have read from just one perspective. I feel like with two perspectives we got to see too many subplots. Both Tim and Alice have their own issues to deal with, and it would have been better if we had only gotten to see one set of issues in detail. I also liked reading from Tim’s perspective a lot more than I enjoyed Alice’s. Tim’s story and development was so heartwarming. What happened to him was a little bit predictable but his character growth was astounding and definitely made me cry.

This has been a little bit of a messy review. I wasn’t planning on writing and posting this today but I just had to get my thoughts down after finishing the book. If you’re looking for a book that will make you laugh and cry from all the feels, this is one for you.