2006-12-31 Courtesy of Teens Read Too

Megan has always moved around a lot, but this time her living situation has changed even more drastically than usual. When she refused to pack up and move to South Korea with her parents, both in the army, they proposed another option: spending her last two years of high school living in Boston with the McGowans. John McGowan is an old friend of her father's. What makes this so different? The fact that the McGowans have seven sons. Megan is an only child, and can't imagine living with seven boys!

Life with Evan, Sean, Finn, Caleb, Ian, Miller, and Doug McGowan is as foreign to Megan as South Korea would have been. Her best friend from Texas, Tracy, even calls it an immersion experience; Megan will go in clueless and come out speaking the language of boys!

Even if the McGowan boys and Megan are supposed to be siblings, they don't exactly relate that way. After all, they haven't seen each other since they were little kids. Now Megan is in hostile territory; she's not exactly welcomed by each of the nine members of the McGowan family (though Regina, John's wife, is more than thrilled to have another female in the house, taking tomboyish Megan on shopping sprees and to the spa). And then there's the fact that Finn and Evan are, well, hot. And John and Regina even had a family meeting to tell the kids that they're all siblings now...but siblings don't want to kiss each other.

On top of dealing with the drama of living with the McGowan boys, Megan also has to handle starting over at a new school. She gets off to a good start when she makes the soccer team and even a few new possible friends. That quickly goes sour, though, when she is targeted by Hailey, Evan's girlfriend, who's jealous of Megan's talent on the soccer field--and her living arrangements. Can Megan handle Boston and the McGowan boys, or will South Korea turn out the be the easier option?

MEGAN MEADE'S GUIDE TO THE MCGOWAN BOYS is a fantastically fun book! It's full of great characters; even the minor characters seem three-dimensional. Kate Brian is a talented writer, and this novel is an awesome page-turner. I devoured this book; I read at every spare moment and took less than twenty-four hours to finish it--on a weekday! Megan's transition from shy to outspoken didn't feel one hundred percent real to me, but that was only a tiny issue; the book was still great. This is one book that definitely feels like there could be a sequel in the works (which is exciting), but that didn't stop it from being a complete (and completely awesome) story on its own.

Reviewed by: Jocelyn Pearce