Dessen, Sarah - This Lullaby
Sun, Feb. 27th, 2005 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterPicked this up after reading the back in a store and recalling that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
coffee_and_ink had Dessen on her Year's Best list.
Remy is one of those rather emotionally closed off heroines that I am quite fond of. She's a bit of a cynic about love, to say the least, and she dates guys and leaves them just when the initial glow begins to fade. Unsurprisingly, the book is about the one guy Remy dates and can't quite cut off as easily as all the other guys she has been with. Dexter is seemingly completely wrong with her, and yet, she can't quite make herself get rid of him.
Alas, like most romances, the plot of this book sounds completely unremarkable. But I really love Dessen's voice, and I particularly appreciate how the story is more on Remy's emotional growth and less on the relationship itself. As such, it really makes the effort to include Remy's family and their influences on her, particularly her mother's fifth marriage (if you count Remy's father) and her brother's new, rather serious girlfriend. Remy and Dexter don't exist in a vacuum, like many romance characters do. I keep comparing this book to a romance, just because of the plotline, but it really isn't, not even a teenage romance. It's much more of a story of Remy and what happens with her that last summer before college. I was also a fan of Remy's friends and the dynamics among the four girls, which is never straight forward. I also like how Remy was a bit of a "bad girl" in the past, and how Dessen doesn't use that to teach Remy a lesson of any sort -- it's just part of Remy's past, as much as her romantic mother and her usually-cynical brother.
Went ahead and borrowed a giant stack of more of Dessen's books from the library a few days ago, and am looking forward to them.
Links:
-gwyneira's review
-![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
rilina's review
coffee_and_ink had Dessen on her Year's Best list. Remy is one of those rather emotionally closed off heroines that I am quite fond of. She's a bit of a cynic about love, to say the least, and she dates guys and leaves them just when the initial glow begins to fade. Unsurprisingly, the book is about the one guy Remy dates and can't quite cut off as easily as all the other guys she has been with. Dexter is seemingly completely wrong with her, and yet, she can't quite make herself get rid of him.
Alas, like most romances, the plot of this book sounds completely unremarkable. But I really love Dessen's voice, and I particularly appreciate how the story is more on Remy's emotional growth and less on the relationship itself. As such, it really makes the effort to include Remy's family and their influences on her, particularly her mother's fifth marriage (if you count Remy's father) and her brother's new, rather serious girlfriend. Remy and Dexter don't exist in a vacuum, like many romance characters do. I keep comparing this book to a romance, just because of the plotline, but it really isn't, not even a teenage romance. It's much more of a story of Remy and what happens with her that last summer before college. I was also a fan of Remy's friends and the dynamics among the four girls, which is never straight forward. I also like how Remy was a bit of a "bad girl" in the past, and how Dessen doesn't use that to teach Remy a lesson of any sort -- it's just part of Remy's past, as much as her romantic mother and her usually-cynical brother.
Went ahead and borrowed a giant stack of more of Dessen's books from the library a few days ago, and am looking forward to them.
Links:
-
gwyneira's review-
rilina's review