Dessen, Sarah - Someone Like You

[oyceter]

This was incredibly difficult to read, not because it was bad, but because it did what it set out to do so very well.

Like all of Dessen's books, this one is on a teenage girl growing up. In this case, Halley has to deal with a lot more than she used to, from the growing distance between her and her mother, her best friend Scarlett's heartbreak and pregnancy, and her own ventures into the world of boys.

Thankfully, Dessen is so good that I never really doubted that she could handle the pregnancy storyline and the bad boy romance storyline without anvils and without giant "Caution!" signs everywhere. Obviously, it's not a great situation, but all the characters react differently to what happens, and I got a sense that the pregnancy was in no way going to ruin Scarlett's life. Actually, Scarlett came out really strongly in it, which I enjoyed, particularly when compared to her less practical mother Marion.

The part that was extremely painful to read was Halley's worsening relationship with her mother, particularly the feeling of being controlled, of not being listened to. Halley's mother is a therapist who often counsels parents on dealing with troubled teenagers; Halley and her mother also used to be very close until recently. Often, conversations with her mother are very geared toward the "I know what's good for you, I know best, I do this because I care and don't want you to ruin your life" vein, which hits basically every single button I have with my mother. Obviously, I'm not going to be rational about this part.

Dessen doesn't paint Halley's mother as evil or anything, but I just got so frustrated and irritated with her, just like Halley was. And even though Halley makes some bad choices and gets in trouble, I like that Dessen doesn't fall back on that as a way to prove that Halley's mother was right all along. Instead, Halley says something later in the book, that her mother has to let her make her own mistakes, which completely resonated with me, because I keep trying to tell my mom that.

And now, this write-up is getting uncomfortably personal. It's a good book. It's just that it hits so many of my buttons that I will probably never reread it because it reminds me way too much of the bad parts of dealing with my mom. (there are good parts too, it's just that this highlights the very things I find most annoying)

Comments

[fiveandfour.livejournal.com]

I saw that Mandy Moore movie How to Deal, which the credits said was based on this book. I thought at the time that this might be a book my daughter could like when she's a few years older and I intended to find it - then completely forgot about it. The movie gave the impression that the mother-daughter relationship problems were about equal as respects "fault"; it sounds like the book had a different way of portraying that tension, possibly one more relatable to your average teen. (And I remember being most impressed with the Scarlett storyline in the movie since it seemed the most original, I haven't seen that before element in the story.)

Anyway, sounds like Dessen has a few books under her belt so my daughter will probably find her all by herself. It's just been fun for me to find things I liked as a kid or things I've heard about recently and sock them away for her, but I suppose when she gets to the middle-to-high school years something I picked out will be about the last thing she'll want to read :).

[oyceter]

I think Dessen actually does a very good job of portraying the mother-daughter relationship and not making it any one person's "fault;" it's probably more my personal feelings that bias me toward one side. It's also in Halley's POV, so that could also change things.

But I really do like Dessen and her books, and hope that your daughter does too!