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| Image: HarperCollins Publishers |
Teen Tuesday features The Rest of the Story by Sarah Dessen. Seventeen-year-old Emma Saylor Payne barely remembers her mother, who died when she was ten. While she has a good relationship with her dentist father, he's tightlipped about her mother except to acknowledge her addictions and how they contributed to their marriage failing as well as her death. It also probably contributes to her tendency toward anxiety and perfect behavior. Otherwise, she knows nothing and none of the relatives on her mother's side. All that changes when her father remarries and his plans for Emma to stay with a friend for the three weeks of their honeymoon fall through. She is sent to North Lake to stay with her grandmother and her extended family.
North Lake is a resort community divided by class—a rich country club resort on one side of the lake and more modest hotels on the other. Emma's mom came from the poorer side. Emma's dad from the other. Her relatives are all strangers to her, but they seem to know all about her and definitely know a ton about her mom.
As with any Sarah Dessen book, the pace is quite leisurely and the reader really gets to know the characters. Her heroines tend to be exceedingly self-deprecating, nice, anxious and over-analytical. In other words, at once relatable and annoying. She and her characters are like that perfect friend you have that occasionally drives you to mad, jealous, petty tirades that ultimately make you feel guilty because they are just so nice. My teen self would've eaten this up and asked for more. My old-as-dirt self gets a bit impatient. Still, teen fans of Dessen's will eat this breezy, leisurely novel up and ask for more.
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