A coming-of-age story about a home-schooled teen coping with anxiety attacks and the boy next door she is inexplicably drawn to. The slow burn romance has a definite twist to the ending that I did not see coming until about 60 percent into the book, especially as this started off as a cutesy YA romance!

Mallory and Troy meet first at age 12. She smiles. He scowls. She thinks its because her dog deflated his ball that sailed over the fence between their homes. They never speak again. For the next five years, Mallory watches from her window every day as Troy runs down the street revealing sculpted abs and tattoos when he tears off his shirt. This she reports back to her pen pal Nic through an online chat.

I have to admit, if I lived next door to Troy, I'd probably be spying on him, too! But, his personality would probably kill the attraction. He's so broody. Ugh. And, yet, Mallory's attraction intensifies as she gets to know him and he starts to let down his walls. While things heat up with Troy (code for lots of touchy feely!), Mallory also develops new friendships and self-admittedly becomes less "judgey" of people she didn't really know.

With all the blushing encounters between Mallory and Troy, it threw me for a loop when a murder occurs which unleashes an avalanche of memories for Mallory. All the secrets start to unravel at this point, including secrets that Troy himself has kept from Mallory. As the reader, I gotta say it was a lot to take in, but it kept the story from being overly predictable and overall it was a quite satisfying ending!

Thank you to #NetGalley for the advance reader copy of #ISpytheBoyNextDoor!

This book is about a senior in high school—Mallory Taylor—who has been infatuated with her next door neighbor for some time. This story takes off when Mallory is able to enroll in the local public school for her senior year while also realizing there are more secrets to her next-door crush than she thought.

I have very mixed feelings on this book. I don’t think this was the type of book that makes me super crazy and happy like some other ones do. I was interested in the beginning but it fell off pretty quickly for me. It was full of cliches and scenes that I don’t particularly find cute.

I was uncomfortable with the whole “spying” thing and I know, I’ve seen the title but I didn’t think it would be like this. The whole “I’m going to stalk you and until you like me” on BOTH ends didn’t sit well with me especially one scene where it’s supposed to be romantic when he sneaks into her room while she’s sleeping after having talked to each other like....twice?? Don’t romanticize that type of behavior please :,) I admit I used to read books like this when I was 15 and thought it was so cute but now at 19, I know how inappropriate and terrifying that would actually be.
I think that the dark themes in this story could've been handled a lot better than they were and that's the main reason I'm giving this the rating that I did.

Overall, I'm pretty disappointed because I really was curious about this one. Maybe this one just wasn't meant for me.

<i>ARC kindly provided by the publisher via Netgalley <3 Thank you!</i>

You know those books where you think it's one type of book and it turns out a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WAY THAN YOU ORIGINALLY THOUGHT?? This is that book, but in a truly amazing way! Mallory Taylor is a completely sheltered and naive character (and it's totally fitting). At first I thought, "Ugh, you cannot be THAT naive!" but those thoughts disappeared fast, and soon I was completely behind her 100% of the way as she grows as a person throughout the book. Troy Parker was an awesome character that transforms throughout the book as well. My emotions for him were all over the place, until about halfway through the book when I thought "Oh, THAT'S why he's the way he is!". I finished this book in a day. I could NOT put it down, and I am now going to devour anything else that Samantha Armstrong has written!

Mal and Troy have been neighbours for the last five years but even though Mal has had a serious crush on Troy they met only once because Mal is being homeschooled. No friends, no school, no parties - Mal finally wants to experience real school and she begs her parents' permission to go to school for her final year before college. That's when Troy and Mal start to interact more and more. and it turns out that Troy may know way more about Mal than she knows about herself. With lots of plot twists, suspence and swoon worthy moments this book is one of the best novels ever! I wholeheartedly recommend it especially for all the fans of 'The Kissing Booth' - Troy is very much like Noah from Beth Reekles's book.

This reminds me of Mean Girls meets The Kissing Booth with a twist.

The story follows Mallory, a seventeen-year-old, who's been homeschooled most of her life because she was almost kidnapped as a child, so her mother is slightly overprotective of her. Since Mallory doesn't much to do with her spare time, she's taken up spying on her next door neighbor, Troy, ever since he moved in five years ago. One day, Mallory decides she's had enough of the homeschooled life, and wants to attend the local public school to see what it's all about. She's seen movies and read books, but wants to experience it herself. After much reluctance from her parents, they enroll her in the school. Shortly after attending the school, she starts interacting with Troy.

The story continues like a typical YA Contemporary Romance novel, until the last 85% of the book where it takes this sudden dark, twisted turn where you're like, "wait, what?". It's a little far fetched, and it does give the story an interesting element; however, it was a little sudden in my opinion. There didn't seem to be many clues to hint that something like that would happen, which I can assume is for the shock value, but it also made it seem like the author was trying to spice things up and decided to add the last 15% of the book at the very last minute.

It was enjoyable, just a little jarring with how sudden things seemed to have progressed.

I gave the book 3.5 stars because it does tend to be pretty cliche in the YA Contemporary Romance aspect, and the twist at the end does have some cliche to it too, but it's still a unique twist that's not very popular, in my opinion.

I believe the characters' romance would be classified as hate-to-love, as well as, slowburn.

Some might even go as far as saying they would hate the love interest because he has "abusive" tendencies, or is just an overall asshole, but it wasn't as bad as other "Romance" books that portray toxic relationships (if that makes sense?).

Thank you to Samantha Armstrong for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I want to thank Netgalley for providing me an Arc of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I really loved this book.
When I first read the synopsis I thought I was going to be a typical YA books where the girl and boy next door fall in love but it was so much more than that.
I loved our main character and found that I related to her a lot.
The play was amazing and the twist at the end absolutely blew me away.
This book was honestly amazingly well written and I can’t recommend it enough.
I gave it 4 stars.

So I thought this was going to be a cutesy sort of book, and I think maybe it would be better categorized as NA because it felt like it except for the character’s ages. I think my main problem was I didn’t understand why Mallory liked Troy for 5 years. Because he was hot??? I think there needed to be a little more depth there as to why, especially since he was a douche to her for a bit! Eventually, they do have some great chemistry together with fantastic swoony moments! Andddddd the last 30% was really addicting!

I was looking for a mindless fun YA with loads of cheese and a little steam. I got so much more.
Over 70 percent of the book is filled with cliches. Bad boy and an underground boxing ring, check. Tattoos and Harley Davidson, check. Ms.Goody two shoes virgin with overprotective parents, check. Annoying sibling who has no purpose in the story, check. Half a decade long crush which seems unrequited only to the girl, but so obvious even to strangers, check. And yeah, there's also a gay bestfriend.
So basically, Mallory has been spying and crushing on her neighbour for over 5 years while being homeschooled by her anal retentive parents after a kidnap scare ages ago. Determined to live a normal teenage year before going to college, she pushes her parents to get her to attend a public school and there starts the story. She attends parties, underground fights, learns to sneak out of house after curfews, gains confidence, learns to get over her panic attacks after some hanky panky with the dream guy and gets a boyfriend. And the boyfriend calls her by someone else's name in a drunken stupor and carries on a mushy colloquy. Shit hits the roof and what follows is something straight out of a 80s television show. Family dramas, drug lord daddies, incomprehensible affairs, step sisters, villains, witness protections and bodyguards.
This unusual blend of noir in a YA romance was quite bold an attempt, but not as entertaining as I'd have liked. 3.5 stars.

I’m so excited I got to read this book! I’m a sucker for a classic YA - girl has a crush on boy, meets boy and they fall in love, but something is in their way. BUT! This book had something extra thrown in - a twist that I did not guess AT ALL. Seriously, y’all. I did NOT see that one coming and it was so crazy and so perfect.

I will say that there were some sections with sex that I was not really expecting. It didn’t bother me, but I also wasn’t expecting as much detail as there was.