This was one of those books where my reactions to it fell mostly in the extremes, and there are going to be SPOILERS so I can talk about freely about the missteps. I was immediately drawn in by Annabel and the obvious tension in her. She had been recently ostracized by her former best friend, popular mean girl Sophie, and her life at home is also fragile, between a sister currently recovering from an eating disorder and a mother who has a history of depression. […]
Another Goodbye Girl
I read this for Romance Book Bingo 2017: Guy/Girl Next Door square. Though I really did enjoy 2 out of the 3 Dessen books I reviewed yesterday, this one fell very short. It has classic Dessen moments (or what I consider classic). However, the flow of this book was pretty bad. It took me a while to get through it, and I am not going to lie, I started skimming a bit last night because I was seriously bored the whole time. I think the […]
Death Sucks, That is All
This one hit all of the high marks for me. I think that Dessen takes a really good look at grief and how hard it is to bounce back from a death. We have several teens in this book that had tragic things occur and I loved the different reactions by all of them. And I thought the ending, while showing how one can move on, didn’t just slap a bow on things either. Macy Queen is dealing with the death of her father. Her […]
Eh, You Can’t Win Them All
Please note that I gave this book 3.5 stars and rounded it up to 4 stars here. I really enjoyed “Saint Anything” by Sarah Dessen, but not as much as I did “Lock and Key.” The biggest issue I really had with this book was the fact that Sydney’s mother and father were 100 percent ridiculous. And them not realizing the danger of Ames. I also hated the final scene between Ames and Sydney with Sydney rushing off. It didn’t feel real at all. This […]
Key to My Heart
What can I really say. I loved this book to pieces. It’s been a while since I can say that a book was picture perfect from beginning to end, but I really did find this book worked great. I had no issues with the writing, dialogue, plot, setting or pacing. I went and borrowed a ton of other Sarah Dessen books from the library as soon as I finished “Lock and Key.” I read this for the “Key to My Heart” square for Romance Book […]
“I like flaws. I think they make things interesting.”
This is a fairly uninformed opinion, but as a casual reader of YA I feel like there has been a dearth, of late, of straightfoward, non- high concept/fantasy YA. Sarah Dessen seems like she hails from a class of YA authors from the mid to late aughts that mine realistic, if unusual, situations to examine the poignant emotional minutiae of the teen experience. The Truth About Forever is the sensitive and quietly resonant story of Macy Queen, who had been the first person of her […]