This Lullaby By: Sarah Dessen

Rereading this book as a 23 year old (as opposed to a 16 year old) makes a world of difference. At 16, I could not get enough of Sarah Dessen’s novels. I read every single one I could get my hands on, including this one.

As an adult, I found this book strangely depressing. It’s not that it is a bad book, or even a boring book, it was the fact that at 16 I connected so much with the main character, Remy, and now, I see her as this pessimistic bitch.

She meets Dexter who is in every way the coolest guy ever and blows him off for about 6O% of the novel (collectively) and the other 40% treating him like this scumbag dude. When in actuality, he is everything that a gal can ask for in a guy. Her excuse, of course, being that love is a fleeting and unimportant substance that will come and go several times within your life. She is searching for the perfect man whom she can settle down and marry, though she is looking for anything but, so really she will never be happy.

Remy is callous and negative. Dexter is easy going and lives in the moment. Of course the whole book is saying how opposites attract and that you will find love in all the most unexpected of places, but SERIOUSLY?! Its literally in the last chapter that she realizes how cold she is and should take the risk and let him into her life. I HATE that. When the whole book is leading up to this (very expected) moment and then in the last 5 pages it happens and in this long distance/ half-assed sort of way. For once I would like a book to pick up where they actually get together and then see if it will work or not.

I really cannot get over how much of a snob she is, and how free flowing he is. (I need to find myself a Dexter, ha ha)

It’s the same as all the chick flicks we all love to watch and it ends with them falling and love and getting married (not that that is how this book ends at all) but what happens next? Do they actually have a happily ever after? Do they stay together but fight all the time? WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?!

All in all: your typical garden variety teen novel. Worth the read but not something you are to covet and yearn to read again.

Favorite Quote:

“Because you can never go from going out to being friends, just like that. It's a lie. It's just something that people say they'll do to take the permanence out of a breakup. And someone always takes it to mean more than it does, and then is hurt even more when, inevitably, said ‘friendly' relationship is still a major step down from the previous relationship, and it's like breaking up all over again. But messier.”