The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

The book I chose was The Truth about Forever, by Sarah Dessen. Though more of a beach read than scholarly, I liked the novel a lot because it is relatable. Macy is a junior in high school, who still suffers from the pain of watching her father die of a heart attack only 2 years before. Since then, her and her mother have lived without speaking of his death, within a perfect facade of "fine just fine", as Macy refers to it. Macy was the "perfect" child compared to her older sister, a reputation heightened by the fact that her boyfriend, Jason, is the ideal teenager. Smart and nationally recognized for his school-recycling program, Jason is the cliched, perfect child that every parent wants to have. He leaves Macy for camp, breaking up with her in the process, and Macy is left to a summer with a job at the library and books of SAT vocabulary. However, Macy's life begins to change after her mother's real estate party is catered by Wish Catering. Eccentric and chaotic, Macy is immediately drawn to Delia, the woman who owns the company, and its teenage employees. She meets Wes, a boy who understands her having lost his mother to cancer, and makes friends with Kristy, Bert, and Monica; Macy becomes truly happy for the first time since her father passed away.

This novel is cliched and predictable, yes, but I loved how Dessen sets up her characters. Though they are all different, it becomes easy to relate to each one: Delia is comforted by the chaos of her business, Bert has an obsession with the end of the world, Kristy is boy-crazy and eccentric, and Wes is caring and intriguing. The reader can easily relate to Macy's struggles with her father's death and her mother's inability to cope with her grief, and wills the story to have a happy ending. There is a quote in Ms. Parrish's room by Emily Dickinson: "Forever is composed of nows". Dessen's book expresses the same message; with so little time to live in this world, it becomes so important to truly live while you can. Macy spent so long grieving for her father and trying to live up to her mother's expectations that she never focused on her own happiness. Wish gives her this happiness and allows her to experience a real, imperfect life. The last few sentences of the novel read, "That was the thing. You just never knew. Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was really all about. It was twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wished would last and last. But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered, and that was this: it was happening" (Dessen 374). Dessen's novel is enticing because it is a story that readers can easily connect to; though the novel's themes are not very original, the characters and storyline are. I would recommend it as a quick read just for fun.

http://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Forever-Sarah-Dessen/dp/0142406252/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298841865&sr=8-1