content warnings: death of a loved one, mentions of a fatal car accident, references to homophobia, mentions of major workplace injuries
representation: lesbian main characters, f/f main relationship, sapphic side characters, f/f side relationships

“Jude definitely didn’t want to kiss me, which was fine. That was her right. It made things a little difficult since I wanted to kiss her more than I’d wanted to kiss anyone in my whole life. I wanted to kiss Jude more than I wanted…well, just about anything. Not more than I wanted to leave Maine, that was for sure, but I wasn’t comfortable with how close those two were in the race for what I wanted.”

This is my first Chelsea M. Cameron and, I gotta say, I really wish I had liked this more. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed it and would recommend it. It just wasn’t really what I wanted.

The Girl Next Door follows Iris, a woman who moved to Boston for college with no intentions of returning but has been forced to by circumstance. She’s now living with her parents again in the small seaside town of Salty Cove and can’t wait to leave again. She’s not the only person who’s come back home, though. Jude Wicks is now living alone in her parents’ house next door to Iris’ where she’s content to live out the rest of her days as a lobsterman after a tragedy that’s closed her off to the world. The two women start to reconnect and, unbeknownst to the other, begin to fall in love.

I’m always excited to read a sapphic romance, and in that regard, this was a slam dunk. Iris and Jude have amazing chemistry and I loved to read about them getting to know each other as adults. They have so many scenes where it’s just the two of the them talking, and it’s a little awkward but also nice because they start to realise that they’re the only people they feel comfortable around in this whole town.

On that note, I also loved the discussion of queerness in small towns in this. I love that there’s no overt homophobia but references to people being different once you come out and being scared to come out in high school because you have to spend every day with these kids and if they can make fun of you for something they’ll make your life a living hell. There are also moments between Jude and Iris where they mention how nice it is to talk to another queer person who has some understanding of what it’s like being a queer person in this town and feeling so alone. My favourite bit regarding queerness, though, was when Iris found a queer club and discovered how many queer people there were in her town. Because queerness isn’t something that you can generally tell just by looking at someone, it’s easy to feel isolated and like no one understands your struggle, so finding out that there are so many other people who have an idea of what you’re going through even if they’ve never gone through it themselves can be really nice.

In general, I was really loving the first two-thirds of this book, with the flirting between the two leads, references to Jude’s mysterious past, and Iris dealing with living at home again. But (spoilers, I guess) once the two main characters got together, I found it a lot less interesting. I thought the last third or so wasn’t well-paced and lots of things felt like they were being skipped over. I also wasn’t a massive fan of the sex scenes. When I first read them, I thought I just wasn’t in the mood to read something smutty but then I read a smutty book literally right after and was really into that, so I think I just didn’t love the writing of the scenes here.

But, to end on a positive note, here are two small things I loved so goddamn much: Dolly, Iris’ adorable dog that made me want to cuddle my own dog, and Iris’ dad, who can’t work anymore after a serious injury and now spends all his time reading various Young Adult books which just charmed me to no end. (None of the books are ever named but if you’re well-versed in YA you can definitely pick out some references. I’m almost 100% sure that Six of Crows and Ash were both featured in here).

I do wish that my first experience with Chelsea M. Cameron had been more positive, but I’m still excited to pick up some of her other books that seem right up my alley. I would also still recommend this because those first two thirds are really good.

I received an ARC of this book for free as part of a blog tour in exchange for an honest review.