[Review] What Happened To Goodbye by Sarah Dessen

What Happened To Goodbye by Sarah Dessen
Published May 1st, 2011.
Viking Juvenile.
Young Adult Contemporary Romance

Premise:

Who is the real McLean? 

Since her parents' bitter divorce, McLean and her dad, a restaurant consultant, have been on the move-four towns in two years. Estranged from her mother and her mother's new family, McLean has followed her dad in leaving the unhappy past behind. And each new place gives her a chance to try out a new persona: from cheerleader to drama diva. But now, for the first time, McLean discovers a desire to stay in one place and just be herself, whoever that is. Perhaps Dave, the guy next door, can help her find out. 

Combining Sarah Dessen's trademark graceful writing, great characters, and compelling storytelling, What Happened to Goodbye is irresistible reading.

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Review

My thoughts: 

This is my favorite Sarah Dessen book so far. It was fun and heart-warming, with a cutesy slow-building romance, and overall adorable. I loved it. The thing with Sarah Dessen books is that even if they're fluffy and unpretentious summer reads, I find that there's always something lacking in her books, but for the life of me I could't find a reason to take away one of the stars this time. It was just the perfect summer read.

McClean is in her senior year of high school and has being moving from town to town with her father after an ugly divorce that left her life in unrecognizable pieces. The whole divorce theme was really well done, being a kid of divorced parents myself, I found that all the feelings, emotions and reactions were accurate and felt real to me. I could relate so much to McClean, she was such authentic character. It felt like I knew her ever when she didn't even knew herself all that well. I was able to see a lot of what went down in my parent divorce throughout the story and that really surprised me. 

Obviously my dad is not a brilliant chef and my mother didn't leave him for a superstar basketball coach or anything like that. But my dad was a basketball player and fan too, which made it so easy for me to relate to the whole theme. Also, I know a lot about how you feel like you need to put the blame on someone after a divorce and how everything is so complicated and how it feels like it'll never be the same again. I felt so enraged at the way McClean's mom was behaving and screamed at the book what a bitch she was a few times. I felt so hard for McClean and what she was going through because my relationship with my mother went down exactly like that and I couldn't believe how everything in the book was so close to reality for me.

The whole identity crisis McClean is going through as a way to cope, felt authentic and not just something to try and make the character more interesting which I really appreciate. I just loved how imperfect she was and how hard she tried to be better. She was an amazing character.

Most of the characters were amazing, actually. I loved Gus (McClean's dad) because he was so childlike, really whimsical and funny and pulling through as best as he could. I loved Dave and his weird ways. I even enjoyed Deb and Heather, and for most people they would fall in the "acquired taste" category. 

Overall, I just really loved this book. It inspired me to keep on reading more of Sarah Dessen despite some disappointments I've had with some of her books in the past.

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About the author

 

Sarah Dessen grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and attended UNC-Chapel Hill, graduating with highest honors in Creative Writing. She is the author of several novels, including Someone Like You, Just Listen and Along for the Ride. A motion picture based on her first two books, entitled How to Deal, was released in 2003. Her eleventh novel,The Moon and More, will be published in June 2013. She lives in North Carolina.

[Review] This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen

This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen
Published March 8th, 2004.
Speak.
Young Adult Contemporary Romance

Premise:
When it comes to relationships, Remy doesn't mess around. After all, she's learned all there is to know from her mother, who's currently working on husband number five. But there's something about Dexter that seems to defy all of Remy's rules. He certainly doesn't seem like Mr. Right. For some reason, however, Remy just can't seem to shake him. Could it be that Remy's starting to understand what those love songs are all about? 

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Review

My thoughts: 

I don’t know what this book was. I’d read a couple of Sarah Dessen’s books before and I really liked them, because the characters were so relatable and authentic, but in this one they were just awful.

I disliked every character in the story, except maybe for Monkey (Yes, the freaking dog!) and I don’t even know if that counts.

Remy, our main character is a bitter bitch, so afraid of any real commitment that she goes sleeping around without a single care in the world about who she’s hurting. She’s a control-freak that flips out whenever something doesn’t go her way and it was extremely hard for me to feel sympathy for her throughout the book. 

Remy’s friends weren’t much better than her. I hated Chloe the most, because she was the kind of friend who’s self-absorbed and superficial that she would rather mock her friend’s feelings rather than try to comfort her in time of need, because the first option just seems like more fun. Lissa and Jess were kind of okay but felt really flat for me and completely forgettable (I had to look up their names because I’d already forgotten them).

The love interest, Dexter, the musician, was kind of a mess and not really appealing for me. I mean I like when a guy is confident and everything but when you tell him “Leave me alone” repeatedly and he just won’t take the hint, it just becomes really annoying. 

Remy’s mother was the worst. I mean… that kind of people shouldn’t even be allowed to have children. I get that she’s a hopeless romantic and a writer, but after you’ve drag your children through your first four messed up marriages, you don’t make your just-fresh-out-of-school child plan your fifth wedding while you sit and wait that everything turns out perfectly. You just don’t! And the fifth husband was awful too and the way he treated Remy at one point… You would’ve expected this woman to say something to him, and defend her daughter… but she didn’t even bother. Jesus!

I just wonder why I kept reading… It was a mess, I hated everyone and somehow I still found it entertaining, which is beyond me…  Don’t even ask me to explain this because I can’t even understand it myself. I guess it was just so awful that it couldn’t get any worse, so I just kept hoping for it to get better.

I hope the next Dessen’s book I read won’t be as bad as this one, because I really liked the author before this one and now I’m kind of in the fence about her. A shame!

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About the author

 

Sarah Dessen grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and attended UNC-Chapel Hill, graduating with highest honors in Creative Writing. She is the author of several novels, including Someone Like You, Just Listen and Along for the Ride. A motion picture based on her first two books, entitled How to Deal, was released in 2003. Her eleventh novel,The Moon and More, will be published in June 2013. She lives in North Carolina.

[Review] Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

Just Listen by Sarah Dessen
Published April 6th, 2006.
Viking Books for Young Readers.
Young Adult Contemporary Romance

Premise:
Last year, Annabel was "the girl who has everything" — at least that's the part she played in the television commercial for Kopf's Department Store.

This year, she's the girl who has nothing: no best friend because mean-but-exciting Sophie dropped her, no peace at home since her older sister became anorexic, and no one to sit with at lunch. Until she meets Owen Armstrong.

Tall, dark, and music-obsessed, Owen is a reformed bad boy with a commitment to truth-telling. With Owen's help, maybe Annabel can face what happened the night she and Sophie stopped being friends.

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Review

My thoughts: 

This was a great summer read. I really enjoyed it. Just Listen is definitely a page-turner, it’s kind of a long book but I was able to read it in one sitting. Even if this isn’t one of my favorites by this author, it has all those elements that make a Sarah Dessen book what it is: teen romance, the family drama and that message hidden between the pages that makes you all fluffy inside.

The book is told from Annabelle point of view. The thing is, I still don’t know if I really like this main character. Most of the time I didn’t but towards the end I begin to understand her better even if I didn’t really relate to her. She hates confrontation and avoids it at all cost, even if it means losing her friends or living a complete lie, which doesn’t sit well with me. But this whole book follows Annabelle’s struggle with that topic and throughout the pages, especially towards the end, we see her grow and start taking charge of her life, revisiting mistakes from her past and trying to make it right even if that’s scary as hell.

What really kept me awake at night reading were the love interest and the set of secondary characters. Owen, this tough guy who everyone seems to be a little afraid of, is a great character; I love how he deals with his anger issues, his always-honest ways and the fact that he’s totally crazy about music. I really think that if it wasn’t for this character, Annabelle wouldn’t have even noticed that she was doing something wrong, because at the beginning she’s that kind of passive character, she doesn’t really see things pretty much until they’re pointed out to her.

The other characters I loved were Whitney, Annabelle recovering anorexic sister who also grows a lot throughout the book. Mallory, Owen’s annoying little sister who worships Annabelle for all the wrong reasons but it’s a great comic relief for all the drama going on. And finally, Rolly, Owen’s friend, who also made me crack up several times with his great personality and funny lines.

Overall, I think this was a great read, even though I would’ve liked a stronger main character, I still enjoyed it. 

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About the author

 

Sarah Dessen grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and attended UNC-Chapel Hill, graduating with highest honors in Creative Writing. She is the author of several novels, including Someone Like You, Just Listen and Along for the Ride. A motion picture based on her first two books, entitled How to Deal, was released in 2003. Her eleventh novel,The Moon and More, will be published in June 2013. She lives in North Carolina.

[Review] The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen
Published May 11th, 2004
Penguin Group Inc.
Young Adult Contemporary Romance

Premise:

A long, hot summer...
That's what Macy has to look forward to while her boyfriend, Jason, is away at Brain Camp. Days will be spent at a boring job in the library, evenings will be filled with vocabulary drills for the SATs, and spare time will be passed with her mother, the two of them sharing a silent grief at the traumatic loss of Macy's father.

But sometimes unexpected things can happen—things such as the catering job at Wish, with its fun-loving, chaotic crew. Or her sister's project of renovating the neglected beach house, awakening long-buried memories. Things such as meeting Wes, a boy with a past, a taste for Truth-telling, and an amazing artistic talent, the kind of boy who could turn any girl's world upside down. As Macy ventures out of her shell, she begins to wonder, Is it really better to be safe than sorry?

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Review

My thoughts: 

The Truth about Forever was a fun, heartwarming and really beautiful story about a girl named Macey whose father died a while ago and while her sister cried her eyes out and her mother dealt with the grieve working way too much, Macey never got a chance to properly grieve her father’s death. Her sister got married and moved out and she’s left with her workaholic mother who needed her to be perfect, so she was –or at least tried as hard as she could, because she’s “fine, just fine”, which means she’s barely holding up. 

I’d never read Sarah Dessen before. I know everyone loves her and most of the time I tend to have an unpopular opinion about this kind of books, so I was just terrified when I started this one, thinking that maybe it wasn’t for me and I wasn’t gonna like it and I’ll be a freak alone in my corner.

To make the matter more terrifying, this was not one of those books that I start to read and I’m immediately hooked. This one took a while… But around pages 120-150 I couldn’t put it down. I just couldn’t. And God I was glad!

Dessen writing style is light, fast-paced and she has a strange way of making you care so much about the main characters that you root for them no matter what. I found myself hating Jason and Macey’s mom a little because they were so mean to Macey sometimes that I just wanted to shake them –hard- and tell them to be nice! 

I absolutely loved the entire Wish crew, especially Wes and Kimberly. I also loved Caroline, Macey’s sister… All of them were so good for Macey and I feel like they were the ones that kept her going. 

Overall, The Truth about Forever was a really good read and I’m definitely going to check out some of the other Sarah Dessen books.

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About the author

 

Sarah Dessen grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and attended UNC-Chapel Hill, graduating with highest honors in Creative Writing. She is the author of several novels, including Someone Like You, Just Listen and Along for the Ride. A motion picture based on her first two books, entitled How to Deal, was released in 2003. Her eleventh novel,The Moon and More, will be published in June 2013. She lives in North Carolina.

Love,