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Reviewed by Divine Zape for Readers' Favorite
Dan Helpingstine’s The Boy Next Door follows the decade-long romantic entanglement of Don Hathaway and Alice Roland, his former English teacher, starting from the moment at the funeral of Don’s firefighter father, when the two first lock eyes across the graveside, to the local hullabaloo surrounding Alice’s novel. After his graduation, Don kisses Alice in her classroom, and this forces Principal Nancy Walsh to fire her. Alice relocates to Pines High School. Years later, Alice publishes The Boy Next Door, a thinly fictionalized account of their bond, and the novel becomes one of the key targets of Mary Ann Moore’s book-banning campaign. Surprisingly, Don, now a reporter for The Herald, is assigned to cover the uproar while trying to make sense of what love truly means.
The Boy Next Door stands out in that the characters are not archetypal; they are grounded in their human experiences, their brokenness, wounds, and the things they carry in silence. Don's grief sometimes paralyzes him. Alice is perceived by those who attack her as a predator, but she is also broken inside, a mourner, and Dan Helpingstine’s portrait of her inner world is luminous. Mary Ann Moore has her fair share of trauma and background that make her relatable. The setting offers a dazzling image of a small town, with Arcadia and Pines, where McDonald’s French fries punctuate the intimacy between Alice and Don. This is a book that discusses censorship like no other, cleverly plotted and gripping, delivered in an intimate first-person narrative voice.
