‘The Moon and More’, more like ‘Can This be Over Please?’ This is possibly the worst Sarah Dessen book out to date.
It starts out in our beloved beach town Colby. Yet instead of this being the ideal vacation spot we look into the life of the local people. The local life is Emaline a recent graduate of the local high school who is preparing to leave for collage at the end of summer. Emaline life is pretty ordinary. She and her boyfriend of three years Luke, her best friend is the smart and fashionable Daisy. At the end of summer Emaline and Luck are attending the close but not local collage. Yet this is the summer that will changed Emaline, all we have to decide if it was good or bad.
First change was her absent father selling his sister house just outside of Colby. Emaline and her father were close, for he help her get her grades up and promised to pay for her collage. This relationship ends in May when he said he couldn’t pay for her collage and never responded to her emails after. Yet he’s back with his ten year old son Benji for this summer. Emaline will learn the love of a sibling and how to let go of the past, and not have a future.
The second big change is Theo. Oh god did I hate Theo. He was the driven passionate New York film student here in Colby to help his boss Ivy with a documentary on one of the local residents. Theo called himself ‘driven’ I called him ‘annoying’. Everything he did bothered me. His attitude to Colby, Emaline, summer, the world and life in general. He was making everything the ‘Best Thing Ever’ making me wish that he got hit by a car. Yet Emaline saw something in him, and against my wishes they became close. With Theo having big dreams for him and Emaline, she just wants to have a fling and forget for a while. Will they last, or like everything in Colby when tourist leaves it’s the end.
Emaline herself was also not the typical girl. I tried so hard to love her, yet I found her extremely boring. Her home life ‘troubles’ were modern, the boy she gets with are normal, and this was her summer of changed, it seemed like any other summer.
Sarah Dessen has captured us with her teenage love in her books. But this one she seemed to lose her touch. With having so many characters, none with that big of a part in this book it was hard to love anyone. They only ones I liked were Luke even though I hated what he did, and it seemed so out of character, and Daisy Emaline’s best friend who shows up five times at max. With this being the newest Sarah Dessen’s; I pray this isn't the direction she is heading. Yet read and enjoy Emaline’s final summer in Colby, and remember that not all Dessen girls get her true love.