Saturday, August 20, 2011

Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen

THE BLURB:
It’s been so long since Auden slept at night. Ever since her parents’ divorce—or since the fighting started. Now she has the chance to spend a carefree summer with her dad and his new family in the charming beach town where they live. 
A job in a clothes boutique introduces Auden to the world of girls: their talk, their friendship, their crushes. She missed out on all that, too busy being the perfect daughter to her demanding mother. Then she meets Eli, an intriguing loner and a fellow insomniac who becomes her guide to the nocturnal world of the town. Together they embark on parallel quests: for Auden, to experience the carefree teenage life she’s been denied; for Eli, to come to terms with the guilt he feels for the death of a friend.




The Review:

Along for the Ride, like the rest of Sarah
Dessen's novels, is about love, friendship, and family altogether. It has such a delicate and profound plot wherein every character has their own personal issue. 


In this story, we encounter Auden, a girl who is always proper, smart, and reserved, which makes for her peculiar childhood. She has never been carefree---her mom has always expected her not to be---but eversince her parents' divorce, she's had a problem with sleeping. Thus, making her discover the nocturnal world. Auden wants to know what being carefree is like, so she deicided to spend the summer with her dad and her stepmother. She met a couple of new friends and Eli. Eli's been a quiet guy eversince his bestfriend died, and blamed himself for it. In their nocturnal ways, Eli helped Auden experience some of the fun she missed during childhood, while she helped him face and accept that Abe's death is not his fault.

That summer, Auden realized two things: one, that people aren't always what they appear to be---no matter how shallow and overblown or smart and immaculate they seem---and two, that what defines a person is not how many times he/she fails, but the number of times he/she gets up and try again.

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