Customer Reviews

Boy Meets Girl

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

BOY MEETS GIRL is the follow-up to the wildly popular THE BOY NEXT DOOR. In BOY MEETS GIRL, Meg Cabot introduces us to Kate Mackenzie and Mitchell Hertzog via emails, voicemails, diary entries, and various other pieces of modern communication. Newly single and crashing on her best friend's sofa while she apartment-hunts, Kate is an employee in the Human Resources department of the New York Journal, bossed around and undermined by the Tyrannical Office Despot at every corner. When the T.O.D. orders her to fire Ida Lopez, a very popular cafeteria employee, Ida turns around and sues for breach of contract. The attorney on the case is Mitchell Hertzog, and something about Kate clicks with him, despite the fact that every time they meet, his dry cleaner makes money from the disasters that occur - oh, and the fact that his crusading on the Lopez case, intended to impress Kate and show her that he's not a soulless corporate drone, actually gets Kate fired.

Complicating matters for Mitch is the fact that his brother Stuart is engaged to the T.O.D., his younger sister is in a crisis, his older sister wants him to get married, his mother nags him at every turn, and his father, the firm's senior partner, is incommunicado on a never-ending golfing holiday. As for Kate, besides being homeless and jobless, she's covering up for the office vamp's affair with a German ski instructor and being pestered by her ex, first to move back in, then to provide a "recommendation" for him as a boyfriend to a ditzy supermodel whose idea of foreign food is the Olive Garden.

It never ceases to amaze me how well a story can be told in this format. I loved THE BOY NEXT DOOR for its novelty, and BOY MEETS GIRL delivers more of the same. Because many of the same characters appear in both books, I felt like I was revisiting old friends as well as making new ones. Dolly Vargas is as wild as ever, Tim Grabowski is still a huge gossip, George Sanchez is still complaining about the lack of Mountain Dew in the vending machines, and Stacy Trent continues to try to find a life for herself and her husband once the kids are glued to Spongebob Squarepants. Mitch, Kate, and Kate's best friend Jen fit into the setting perfectly. They're great characters, people I'd love to know in real life.

If I have one quibble about BOY MEETS GIRL, it's the fact that the off-screen action can undermine the credibility of the love story. We only know what we are told through email. In THE BOY NEXT DOOR, Mel and John exchanged a lot of email, but in BOY MEETS GIRL, Kate and Mitch rarely communicate this way - everything we know is from Kate's emails to Jen. Readers can feel the chemistry between Kate and Mitch in the deposition transcripts, but there's not a lot of follow-through, so their relationship felt a little rushed to me. On the other hand, Cabot completely nailed the girlfriend vibe - Kate's emails and IM's with Jen read like some of my chats with friends.

The characters were so engaging that my minor complaint was barely a blip on the radar; I enjoyed the book as a whole - and I recommend it to others. Read it - it will raise your spirits, I promise you.

Kate Mackenzie never thought her life would fall apart so quickly. She's working for Amy Jenkins, the Tyrannical Office Despot (T.O.D.), who just happens to be the Director of the New York Journal's Division of Human Resources, and she's sleeping on the couch in her best friend's apartment, as she makes nowhere near enough to afford decent housing in New York City. But things get even worse when the T.O.D. forces Kate to fire Ida Lopez, the dessert cart lady for the New York Journal, for refusing people pie, and, in turn, Ida sues them, saying it was a breach of contract. Now Kate is slowly losing her mind. Her ex-boyfriend is stalking her, she's living with crazy Dolly Vargas (from THE BOY NEXT DOOR), and she's falling for the lawyer, Mitchell Hertzog, handling the Ida Lopez case for the New York Journal, even though she hates corporate lawyers, and hates Mitch's brother, Stuart, even more, for causing this entire mess.

Cabot has done it again. I was doubtful that BOY MEETS GIRL would be able to compare to THE BOY NEXT DOOR, but I was wrong. BOY MEETS GIRL is just as good, if not better than it's prequel. The commentary is snappy and exciting, and the characters are funnier than ever. While the main characters are different than those featured in THE BOY NEXT DOOR, Mel Fuller (the main character in the prequel) is mentioned numerous times, and you are able to see what's happened in her life since the last book. Overall this was a fantastic book. I hope Cabot decides to write a third addition to this series, as I'd like to follow the character's lives even more. All fans of Cabot will be deeply impressed with this new work of literature, and be left craving more. A must-have.

Erika Sorocco

I love books like this one. These are the books that make you sad when you are done reading it because you don't want it to end; you want to know what happens after that. Meg Cabot is by far my favorite author and I enjoy all of her books. This book is my favorite so far. I loved the characters and how everything tied in. The format of it was perfect. Her books make you fall in love with reading.

Meg Cabot truly outdoes herself in this book! Throughtout "Boy Meets Girl", you follow Kate Mackenzie through her not-so-typical life. You laugh with her, you cry with her, and you get frustrated with her. This book reminded me of All American Girl, but had a completely different story line It was beautifully composed with a series of journal entries, emails, written tape recordings, and instant messenger conversations. This story is truly unique and i would recommend any fans of her work to read it! Boy Meets Girl was an phenominal book!

Meg Cabot does it again in BOY MEETS GIRL. The story follows the same format as THE BOY NEXT DOOR. It is told through the technology age: emails, court depositions, telephone recordings, notes on a dinner menu, etc. There are a lot of characters from THE BOY NEXT DOOR who reappear and are still working at the New York Journal.

Our story here starts with the law firm where Mitch has joined at this father's request after a near fatal heart attack. Mitch is given the task of defending the Journal's new HR assistant, Kate Mackenzie, when she and the company are sued for wrongful termination of Ida, the beloved dessert cart operator. Ida refuses to serve her delectable treats to certain members of the management staff. This time, it's Stuart Hertzog, the Journal's legal counsel and fiancé to Kate's boss, Amy Jenkins the "T.O.D." (Tyrannical Office Despot). Stuart has a conflict of interest so he passes this case along to Mitch, even though he doesn't get along with him.

Kate is attracted to Mitch, as he is with her, but every time she is near him, something embarrassing happens to her. Her ex-boyfriend is the only man she has been with and since he won't commit after ten years together, Kate leaves him and camps out on her Jen's couch. Through a series of events, Kate finds herself living with the Journal's style editor, Dolly Vargas. (Yes, she makes an appearance after her stint in THE BOY NEXT DOOR.) Amy tries to pin the termination issues on Kate and Mitch works hard to prove Kate's innocence.

The best parts of Meg Cabot's books are the insights into the corporate world. Every business has those social climbers who will stop at nothing to make themselves look good. Then you have the popular employees who seem to get the knife in the back. This book is clever in it's unfolding of the story around this type of setting. I couldn't put the book down and read it in one sitting. I agree with some others that I hope this isn't the last we have heard from our friends at the New York Journal.

When I first saw this book I looked inside and I was like, whoa, emails and letters this is gonna get confusing. But once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down! I try to put some variety into my reading, because it's boring reading the same old thing every day, and this did it. I haven't read a book this funny since I read Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings by Megan Mccafferty. I could not stop laughing, and now my best friend is begging me to let her read it.
SOOOOOOOO enjoyable. It started off kind of dull, but towards the middle it really picked up. And I couldn't put it down, just having to know what happens next.
Recommended to anyone who wants a good laugh, and to read a good book.

I liked the format for this book, it was a little hard to adjust to at first, but it didn't stop me from loving the story and reading the book over again.
Kate Mackenzie is out to make a difference on the world. With a degree in psychology she was a social services worker, but now works with her best friend Jen Sadler at the New York Journal. Where she tries to make a difference as a huamn rescource rep.
But her boss Amy Jenkins is not out to help others and wants Kate to fire the cake lady. The cake lady Ida lopez is everybody's favorite person in the morning with the delicious treats they get from her food cart.
Kate was forced to fire her and now is being sued for wrongful termination. The good thing, Mitch Hertzog is there to be her knight in shinning armmor.
Get to know the staff of this book, they are reintroduced in the other stories, and we learn how their lives twist and continue to entertain us.

The book "Boy Meets Girl" is a wonderful novel chock-full of humor, wit, sarcasm, and romance. These are all trademarks of any book by Meg Cabot. I finished it in two days and I am ready for it's upcoming sequel "Every Boy's Got One".
The book is all written in journal entries, e-mails, online chatting, and even text written on menus and recipts. Hilarious! And if you like humor and romance, and enjoy some fun and even suspense, this is definately a great read. One of Cabot's best!

Boy Meets Girl is supposedly similar to Meg Cabot's 'Boy Next Door' (i havent read this, but i want to) and is a story told entirely through journal entries, instant message conversations, emails and notes. It's a uniquely wonderful idea as it breaks the monotony of a novel and is a fresh new way of telling a story. The book is fun and very readable. I'd reccomend it to all Meg Cabot fans.

I just finished Boy Meets Girl and couldn't wait to tell EVERYONE how much I enjoyed it~ I heard about this book and decided to look at it at the library, but found myself hooked from the begining--this book is addicting, especially near the end!

The characters are SO original and the plot is great. Everything sounds so realistic, but with a touch of knowing everything will be okay at the end. The format of this book was a nice change (e-mail transcripts, scribblings on menus, flyers, etc). This is a wonderful, light read! Perfect for the summer, beach, or anywhere! I read it during in between time on a recent vacation and found it easy to just pick right up!

I don't think I have ever read a book that made me laugh out loud so much!