You're a Mean One, Matthew Prince by Timothy Janovsky is the story of a poor little rich boy, the titular Matthew, who is exiled to his grandparents' house in a stand-in for Northampton, Massachusetts. Although he is 21, he comes to the town with the emotional maturity of . . . I was going to say a 5 year old, but I actually hate it when people say little kids aren't emotionally mature. While they have not yet learned to master their emotions, most young children want to be kind and feel bad when they fall down on the job. So let's say the emotional maturity of a Hallmark movie heroine in the first act.
The action of the book takes place over the next two weeks. During this period Matthew goes from being a self-absorbed, selfish, materialist unemployed college dropout snob, to being an emotionally mature, loving, helpful, kind, competent business-owner. His parents, who are responsible for his loutishness, undergo a similar transformation in the same time period.
Obviously this is silly. I appreciated that Matthew went to therapy, acknowledged and began to deal with his anxiety disorder, and did some hard work to make himself worthy of Hector, the hot, emotionally available, smart, hardworking and otherwise perfect love interest.
Although I make fun of the impossibly short time period of Matthew's transformation, the book was sweet and engaging. It did leave some open questions, though. For one, Matthew's grandparents are lovely storybook grandparents. How did they manage to raise a selfish loser like Matthew's mother? And will they really not accept any financial assistance from her even though she is rolling in dough that she earned honestly (by being a JK Rowling-like author, minus the transphobia)? That seems, well, crazy. And what will become of the grandmother's bookstore over the long-term? In the book Matthew raises some money to keep it from failing, but without a business plan that's clearly a stopgag measure.
And speaking of stopgag measures, SPOILER HERE
Matthew's mother ends up with the Christmas tree salesman who was her high school sweetheart. Gag me.
