Books | Culture & Community | LGBTQ | Arts & Culture | Youth Arts Journalism Initiative
Photo courtesy of the author.
Warning! There are spoilers ahead!
A group of people sit around a table, about to dig into Thanksgiving dinner. The table is set beautifully: huge plates of turkey, mashed potatoes, and a weird raisin-gravy-vegetable thing no one had touched for fear of food poisoning. Gabby, the protagonist MC's sister-in-law, has just announced her pregnancy. But as the congratulations bubble up around the room, MC can't help but notice that something is off. The air feels tense, combustible. Her brother, Conrad, appears uneasy.
That tension simmers through Rachel Meredith’s 2025 debut novel Girl Next Door, a lesbian rom-com with enough wit, humor, and feeling to delight a reader several times over. In a wild, 336-page ride, Meredith takes the well-loved tropes of neighbors to lovers, friendships on the fritz, and journalism-turned-romance (à la 27 Dresses), and adds her own lovable spin to it. Throughout, the writing has a zippy but cheeky and deeply observant tone of an author who has been doing this for a while, despite it being Meredith’s first published novel.
Meredith, 36 and a New Havener, said that she got the idea from writing another story in which the main plot of Girl Next Door was a side plot. “I just got really excited by it and interested in it, and ended up turning it into a whole book of its own,” she said. While she’s quick to add that the book is not directly inspired by her lived experience, parts of the novel are set in a small town inspired by her upbringing in Long Island.
That’s baked into the novel itself. When MC Calloway’s best friend, a reporter named Joe, calls her for an emergency meeting, she rolls her eyes, thinking he is being dramatic. But when Joe shoves a book at her and tells MC one of the girls on the cover is her, she freaks out. Girl Next Door—yes, a book within a book—is blowing up the literary side of the internet, and it was written by someone who MC is positive is her old neighbor, Nora Pike, writing under a pen name.
The catch? In the book, MC and Nora are wildly in love, nothing like the awkward friends they once were in real life, when they edited a literary magazine together in high school. With Joe’s incessant cajoling, MC sets out to write an article about Nora, now a librarian in the town they grew up in, unveiling her as the author of the book. The plan, if she does it right, will help Joe keep his job at Jawbreaker, a magazine that sounds like a mix between Rolling Stone, TMZ and the New York Post.
But when the two meet, MC realizes some of the sparks between them aren’t only in Nora’s mind. With dramatic plot twists, late-night confessions, and a slow-burn with some spice, Meredith weaves an enticing tale of the love that almost got away.
Her prose entices, with vivid imagery and well-placed plot points that keep a reader guessing. In one scene, Nora leaves the Thanksgiving dinner in a rush to escape the awkwardness of the night, forgetting her plate. She doubles back for it, however, and uses it as an excuse to see MC again. Words come spilling out of Nora, and it leads to a steamy scene between the two .
“‘I lied,” Nora says, and a reader can feel the pink rising in their cheeks. “I mean, I did forget the plate. But I’m back here because you just … drive me fucking crazy.’” The prose moves quickly with a bracing directness, keeping the reader on the edge of their seat.
Meredith said the book took her two years to finish, but she knows some romance writers publish a book (or more!) a year. She added that she thinks books could reasonably take three to five years.
“I spent about one year writing the original book, and then I spent a year doing edits with my agent and publisher,” she said.
With an effortlessly smooth style, the book makes for quick, page-turning read with real substance. Meredith makes the reader feel as though they are standing in the room with the characters. When MC volunteers to be Winnie the Pooh at a children’s story time at the library as a favor to Nora, for instance, Meredith conjures a scene that brings the library to life.
When MC shows up on the day of, Nora reluctantly gestures to the discolored heap of fabric sitting in a box behind the desk, and offers MC an out. MC declines, and as they pull the costume out, they realize that Pooh’s face doesn’t have a nose, and the kids might freak out.
“There’s no nose,’” MC said. ‘I can use a sharpie to fill it in,’” Nora responds. The scene is tender, but humorous, just as it is when Nora gets breathless while putting the costume on MC, from both the effort and being so close to her.
Within a few paragraphs, the author’s apt use of detail truly makes one feel as if they, too, are about to put on, withstand, then throw up from the smell of a giant bear head, which MC describes as a mix of dried urine and corn chips. The sentences can be spare, focusing on moment to moment action, but it makes it feel like a movie playing in a reader's head. The rhythm of individual words pulls one along.
This book will easily steal all the hours you planned to be productive this week, or weekend, or month. Unlike many similar novels, the side characters and underlying plots are well highlighted and genuinely engaging.
Meredith said that her favorite scene to write was one in which multiple characters spill secrets one after the other, just before the climax of the book. In the novel, this unveiling fractures many relationships, mainly between Nora and MC, and Conrad and Gabby.
“I love drama,” she said. “It was just really fun to do.” She says this scene took her very little time to write compared to some of the others. Her favorite part came when Gabby, Conrad’s wife, pushed over the Christmas tree in a fit of rage. Which, honestly, some readers may want to do while poring over the section.
New Haven readers are all abuzz about this book. Lauren Anderson, founder of Possible Futures, said the book was fun, sweet, had depth, and was a “delightful read.” She met Meredith during the author’s frequent visits to Possible Futures, and connected through that. Anderson said that because of her love for local authors, she used Girl Next Door for the October 2025 book for her book club, “Steamy Futures.”
Janday Wilson, a literary critic and writer herself (who wrote about the book for Midbrow, the arts arm of the New Haven Independent), said that she really enjoyed the book, and thought that Meredith’s writing is “kind, insightful and wise.” She met Meredith through a group for writers working on their first novels, and Meredith had come and talked to them.
After hearing her presentation, Wilson “just knew it would be something [she] would be into.” She ultimately read it in one sitting.
“The writing in general is sharp, and not too syrupy,” she said. She added that Meredith has since become “a dear friend.”
This article comes from the ninth and current cohort of the Arts Council's Youth Arts Journalism Initiative (YAJI). From June 29 through August 21, YAJI students pitch, report, write and edit stories with Arts Paper Editor Lucy Gellman, Program Assistants Abiba Biao and Grayce Howe and Mentor Ruby Szekeres. Zahara (Zazie) Gazzola is a rising sophomore at Wilbur Cross High School and the ACES Educational Center for the Arts.