Best Friend Next Door by Carolyn Mackler (review)

Hannah’s mournful when her best friend moves away from the house next door, but into that house moves Emme, who, like Hannah, is going into fifth grade. After a prickly start, the two girls become friends, finding weird commonalities in their lives (they’re born on the same day, they both love swimming and delight in palindromes, they both hate pizza) and sharing Emme’s cat, Butterball. Privately, they’ve got their own challenges: Hannah dreads the arrival of her baby half-sibling and is starting to question her commitment to the swim team, while Emme struggles with bullies in her new class. Will those secret anxieties and insecurities destroy their new friendship? The chatty and accessible narration alternates between Hannah and Emme, effectively revealing what’s below the surface on both sides; the dilemmas, especially Emme’s classroom bullying, are age-authentic and sympathetically portrayed. However, the plot too often resorts to contrivances, and events—such as such as Hannah’s abrupt departure from sleepaway camp in a fit of jealousy and the climactic illness of Emme’s cat—often don’t rise above the formulaic. Friendship challenges are familiar to a lot of middle-graders, though, and they may appreciate seeing two engaging kids stumble a few times before they eventually succeed.