"Lola and the Boy Next Door" was so much better than its predecessor, "Anna and the French Kiss." 
 This second installment of the series follows a seventeen-year-old named Lola, living with her two dads in San Francisco. She's dating a twenty-two-year old named Max, a singer in a local punk rock band. One day, her old next door neighbors move back: twins Calliope and Cricket, the latter being a boy Lola used to have history with. 
 I thought "Lola and the Boy Next Door" really showed the negatives surrounding a teenager dating an older boyfriend/girlfriend. You can definitely see how the age difference is a big deal, even if it's 'only' five years. Max is at a different time in his life, and because of that him and Lola do not need to be together... yet they are. I liked how this relationship wasn't really romanticized; Perkins did a decent job in showing how vindictive and controlling this 22-year-old was to his high school girlfriend. 
 I thought the gay parents aspect was really interesting; I feel like a LOT of YA LGBT literature focuses on the teenagers (which isn't a bad thing at all), but they don't show any non-traditional parenting. 
 I didn't really enjoy Anna's character in the first book, but her and St. Clair do show up in this novel a couple of times, and I actually enjoyed her a lot more! 
 All in all, this novel was a lot better than "Anna," and it was a nice, light, fluffy summer read. I look forward to reading "Isla and the Happily Ever After!"