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A review by caughtbetweenpages
The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
I think The Neighbor Favor was just all right and I think a large part of that is because I don't love the miscommunication trope and I especially hate lying in any sort of romantic scenarios, and a whole lot of this story was spent in the time when Nick knew what was going on where he knew that he was the Mystery Strick with whom Lily had been emailing/falling in love, but Lily was kept in the dark about his identity. There were sort of two sequences of falling in love, and the first one where they're getting to know one another over email felt lovely. I felt that that was just a very, very sweet way of demonstrating how close two people can get even without having ever met just because, on like a soul-deep level, they vibe with one another. I felt the honesty of the banter, the organic development of the friendship into something more, and the heartbreak alongside Lily when Strick ghosted her. I just I could not get swept away in the feelings and the romance the second time around the two were falling in love, because the whole thing was built on dishonesty, and that miscommunication (or lack of communication, more accurately) led to Nick behaving really badly toward Lily. Nick was trying to push Lily away "for her own sake" because he's just "so messed up" and she'd "hate him forever if she found out and then he'd lose a friend", but then he kept drawing her back and getting all romantic... only to push her away before drawing her back again. And this poor girl was experiencing this awful whiplash after having been ghosted by a guy that she really really liked and having that rejection mess with her self esteem yet again. Meanwhile, Nick is sabotaging her attempts to find love in other places as well, cuz he's obsessed with her and doesn't want to see her with anyone else, but he does not tell her the truth that he was Strick and that he's caused her all of this emotional turmoil over the past couple months in the first place, which absolutely sucks!
Because we are in both points of view, we do get Nick's point of view and we get an explanation as to why he wasn't honest with her, but frankly it falls a little bit flat. If your dishonesty is the only thing holding the two of you together, if she would hate you and never speak to you again after you told her the truth, then probably that's what should happen! That's what needs to happen to be fair to her at all, and by continuing the dishonesty, you are demonstrating that you are right about yourself: you are not a good partner for this person. I feel that the period between Nick finding out that she was *that* Lily and Lily finding out about him being Strick, if that timeline had been shortened, and then it was just a lot of like Nick grovelling and trying to make up for the lying and the the misleading and all of the everything, I think then it could have worked a little bit better for me. But after Lily does find out, because it took so long for it to happen, Nick's grand gestures just feel a little bit too little, too late. I don't trust him. And I think the speed with which Lily forgave him for that felt way way way too fast. I get that Nick had a lot of trouble with his family life and his home life, but that is no excuse for sort of dumping the overcoming of that trauma onto this woman and sort of making her feel the burden of having to fix you.
And it really really stinks because I feel like if the romance arc timeline was different--if there was a seriously compressed duration of time between Nick and Lily finding out the truth about one another and that we lengthen the aftermath of Nick working on himself and working FOR Lily, then her falling in love with him demonstrating that he is willing to put effort into her--I think I would have really, really enjoyed the book, because Forest does a pretty great job with character work. Both Lily and Nick are quite well-rounded and complex characters with their own unique support systems that blend together really well, and the chemistry between them is great. Lily's family dynamic of feeling like the underachieving wallflower because her family doesn't understand the markers of success in her career, but still knowing she's deeply loved hit so hard for me, especially in all the Sister Moments of standing up for yourself among them or rallying around them when they need support. With Nick, it was the found family giving him the adopted feral cat treatment of "we'll be here when you're ready to heal" but also not letting him stay up his own ass too much and getting him to get out of his own way was also great. And I LOVED when those worlds collided--a real romance, I think, one with lasting power, is one where each part of the romance's communities work well with each other. Forest did a great job with that.
Also, for the most part, her prose is quite clean and quite readable and nothing really pulls you out of the story. That is a little less true in the Nick chapters because Nick had a tendency of telling rather than showing his emotions. Or rather, showing and then directly after telling, which is, I think, the most frustrating way to do things. So he would do an action that indicates that he wants to protect and take care of Lily and then directly after that the sentence would be something like "he wanted to protect her and be the man she deserved," and it's like. buddy. we know. Not only because you just did a thing that kind of demonstrates that, but because you've said that like 50 different times already (and the reason you've had to say it 50 different times already is because you continue to lie to her).
UGH, but the bits that I did like I I liked quite a bit! I liked the way that Lily and Nick bonded over writing and about Black fantasy, and about creating a more diverse space for readers, and about how that shared passion just sort of grows and blooms and was important in both of their individual arcs as well. I liked how well they got along with one another's families. Despite being, you know, a giant lying jerk, I liked when Nick *was* there for Lily; I like that when she needed him, he'd come to her rescue. I liked how into each other they were, emotionally and physically. And I think their banter and, again, their chemistry was was wonderful, it was beautiful while it was on the page.
I just really hated the premise and the setup and it really soured the rest of it in a tremendous way for me. If you're a little more okay to the idea of, I don't know, miscommunication and just sort of flat out lying and a little bit of gaslighting in your romances, this is definitely one that I would pick up, but if like me those things are sort of hard limits for you, I cannot in good conscience recommend this book. However, given my enjoyment of the other elements of the writing, I will be reading more Kristina Forest in the future.
Because we are in both points of view, we do get Nick's point of view and we get an explanation as to why he wasn't honest with her, but frankly it falls a little bit flat. If your dishonesty is the only thing holding the two of you together, if she would hate you and never speak to you again after you told her the truth, then probably that's what should happen! That's what needs to happen to be fair to her at all, and by continuing the dishonesty, you are demonstrating that you are right about yourself: you are not a good partner for this person. I feel that the period between Nick finding out that she was *that* Lily and Lily finding out about him being Strick, if that timeline had been shortened, and then it was just a lot of like Nick grovelling and trying to make up for the lying and the the misleading and all of the everything, I think then it could have worked a little bit better for me. But after Lily does find out, because it took so long for it to happen, Nick's grand gestures just feel a little bit too little, too late. I don't trust him. And I think the speed with which Lily forgave him for that felt way way way too fast. I get that Nick had a lot of trouble with his family life and his home life, but that is no excuse for sort of dumping the overcoming of that trauma onto this woman and sort of making her feel the burden of having to fix you.
And it really really stinks because I feel like if the romance arc timeline was different--if there was a seriously compressed duration of time between Nick and Lily finding out the truth about one another and that we lengthen the aftermath of Nick working on himself and working FOR Lily, then her falling in love with him demonstrating that he is willing to put effort into her--I think I would have really, really enjoyed the book, because Forest does a pretty great job with character work. Both Lily and Nick are quite well-rounded and complex characters with their own unique support systems that blend together really well, and the chemistry between them is great. Lily's family dynamic of feeling like the underachieving wallflower because her family doesn't understand the markers of success in her career, but still knowing she's deeply loved hit so hard for me, especially in all the Sister Moments of standing up for yourself among them or rallying around them when they need support. With Nick, it was the found family giving him the adopted feral cat treatment of "we'll be here when you're ready to heal" but also not letting him stay up his own ass too much and getting him to get out of his own way was also great. And I LOVED when those worlds collided--a real romance, I think, one with lasting power, is one where each part of the romance's communities work well with each other. Forest did a great job with that.
Also, for the most part, her prose is quite clean and quite readable and nothing really pulls you out of the story. That is a little less true in the Nick chapters because Nick had a tendency of telling rather than showing his emotions. Or rather, showing and then directly after telling, which is, I think, the most frustrating way to do things. So he would do an action that indicates that he wants to protect and take care of Lily and then directly after that the sentence would be something like "he wanted to protect her and be the man she deserved," and it's like. buddy. we know. Not only because you just did a thing that kind of demonstrates that, but because you've said that like 50 different times already (and the reason you've had to say it 50 different times already is because you continue to lie to her).
UGH, but the bits that I did like I I liked quite a bit! I liked the way that Lily and Nick bonded over writing and about Black fantasy, and about creating a more diverse space for readers, and about how that shared passion just sort of grows and blooms and was important in both of their individual arcs as well. I liked how well they got along with one another's families. Despite being, you know, a giant lying jerk, I liked when Nick *was* there for Lily; I like that when she needed him, he'd come to her rescue. I liked how into each other they were, emotionally and physically. And I think their banter and, again, their chemistry was was wonderful, it was beautiful while it was on the page.
I just really hated the premise and the setup and it really soured the rest of it in a tremendous way for me. If you're a little more okay to the idea of, I don't know, miscommunication and just sort of flat out lying and a little bit of gaslighting in your romances, this is definitely one that I would pick up, but if like me those things are sort of hard limits for you, I cannot in good conscience recommend this book. However, given my enjoyment of the other elements of the writing, I will be reading more Kristina Forest in the future.