Book
Details:
Paperback: 448
pages
Publisher: Penguin
(4 Jun 2013)
ISBN-10: 0141348291
ISBN-13: 978-0141348292
Summary:
Luke
is the perfect boyfriend: handsome, kind, fun. He and Emaline have been
together all through high school in Colby, the beach town where they both grew
up. But now, in the summer before college, Emaline wonders if perfect is good
enough.
Enter Theo, a super-ambitious outsider, a New Yorker assisting on a documentary film about a reclusive local artist. Theo's sophisticated, exciting, and, best of all, he thinks Emaline is much too smart for Colby.
Emaline's mostly-absentee father, too, thinks Emaline should have a bigger life, and he's convinced that an Ivy League education is the only route to realizing her potential. Emaline is attracted to the bright future that Theo and her father promise. But she also clings to the deep roots of her loving mother, stepfather, and sisters. Can she ignore the pull of the happily familiar world of Colby?
Emaline wants the moon and more, but how can she balance where she comes from with where she's going?
Sarah Dessen's devoted fans will welcome this story of romance, yearning, and, finally, empowerment. It could only happen in the summer..
Enter Theo, a super-ambitious outsider, a New Yorker assisting on a documentary film about a reclusive local artist. Theo's sophisticated, exciting, and, best of all, he thinks Emaline is much too smart for Colby.
Emaline's mostly-absentee father, too, thinks Emaline should have a bigger life, and he's convinced that an Ivy League education is the only route to realizing her potential. Emaline is attracted to the bright future that Theo and her father promise. But she also clings to the deep roots of her loving mother, stepfather, and sisters. Can she ignore the pull of the happily familiar world of Colby?
Emaline wants the moon and more, but how can she balance where she comes from with where she's going?
Sarah Dessen's devoted fans will welcome this story of romance, yearning, and, finally, empowerment. It could only happen in the summer..
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Rating:
Review:
To begin with, as always, the biggest of thanks to Penguin for sending me this for
review. As a teen growing up in high school, I will always, always remember how
I picked up Sarah Dessen’s copy of “The Truth About Forever” from my school
library, and few days later, my two best friends and I had gone through every
Dessen book our library could offer. Dessen is a reminder of my teen years, and
it’s astonishing to me that I used to read her books as a 14 year old, and here
I am 6 years later, reviewing her very books that I was a consumer of. I’m very
lucky and fortunate that these wonderful things have come my way.
Anyway on
with the review! One word that would truly describe Dessen’s book as a whole,
with The Moon and More being no expectation, is that her books are real. We are
always introduced to real characters, with real problems, and real solutions.
There’s no magical, miracle way out of the issues that wind our characters up, no
one makes their troubles vanish, which would be so easy to do given the power
Dessen has, and we wouldn’t question it. Instead we see headstrong, heart-warming
characters make the best of what they have and solve their troubles. I love
that about Dessen’s works.
I saw a
review that described this book as about nothing and everything – and I couldn’t
agree more. The events of Emaline’s life, summer at her home town, working a
regular job, having siblings and an estranged father and your run-of-the-mill
good looking boyfriend. Essentially, these are mundane, everyday things, the “nothing”
of this book, but what makes it everything is the wires of emotions connecting
each facet of Emaline’s life; what she dreams of having in life, her love for
her family, the questioning of her relationship – this makes it everything.
Love, life and laughter, that’s the "everything" I have come to love about Dessen’s
novel.
With her
fluid, simple yet satisfying writing, we are taken through a journey of Emaline’s
life, the old and the new encounters, as we share a laugh along the way. Romance,
ambition, fun, but more than that, in this book I felt the strongest asset was
family – the dynamics of the muddled family she has, it stuck out for me as it
was more about the people she loves the most, and then came the romance, which
usually takes over in Dessen’s other books (in the best of way of course).
Ambitious,
energetic, handsome Theo vs good looking, safe but lazy Luke. Best of both
worlds, what’s a girl to do eh? A summer romance all the day and with the fear
of giving away with happens with this trio, I shall say no more! ;) Dessen has
done it again with another beach read that tangles up the wires of love and
family, to bring out the best of the world we have come to love. Be sure to
grab a copy of this, releasing on June 4th for all you beautiful UK
people.
