Books from G.A. Hauser > The Boy Next Door

Zachary and Brandon have been friends forever. If you are best friends like they are, all your secrets and firsts are known and done with your best friend.

Both boys grew up in a suburban town of New Jersey, and from the day they met they were inseparable. When teenage curiosity turns into a night that’s everything they had wished for in each other’s arms, it leaves them wanting more and frustrated with their lack of privacy. A sudden family holiday seems to resolve all those issues, but it also increases their chance of discovery.
An accidental meeting after ten years separation finds the boys older, full of anger and wondering if a relationship so new and fragile can survive parental anger, time, and two men angry and full of regret.
Ms. Hauser has managed to create a story that actually starts at the beginning. Although the meat of the story is dealt with in the last five chapters of the book, the build up to getting there is fantastic.
Zachary and Brandon are your average teenagers with all the usual urges and angst. The fact that both their lives took such dramatic paths, due to influences placed on them, is dealt with masterfully by Ms. Hauser. Surviving and forgiving the amount of trauma experienced by both men, while carving out successful careers for themselves, is also testament to the strength of these characters.
The love scenes gets bolder and better as the boys becomes more confident in themselves and each other. Ms. Hauser’s characters tentative steps at getting to know each other as teenagers and eventually rediscovery as adult is a thing of beauty to see evolving.
I cannot get tired of any thing G A Hauser puts her hands to, and The Boy Next Door is definitely a winner.