2nd Quarter Outside Reading Book Review

The Truth about Forever, Sarah Dessen. Penquin Group, 2004. Genre: Fiction

In The Truth about Forever, Macy is a seventeen-year-old girl who recently lost her father. Throughout the story, Macy endures this internal conflict as to how about she deals with life after her father. First she trys to live a safe, organized, scheduled, boring life. Then through the story she changes. After making new, exciting friends from her unstructured catering job, she becomes concious of something. She realizes that stuff happens in life and you just have to move on because life keeps going and nothing lasts forever.


"Grief, fear, and love set the pace and Macy's cresendo from time-bomb perfection to fallible, emotional humnaity is, for the right readers, as gripping as any action adventure."-SLJ, starred review


This book is written from Macy's perspective. She tells the reader about the summer after her dad died. This can be a very heavy topic for Sarah Dessen to write about but I'm glad she did. After reading this book, I can imagine that anyone who lost someone in their life can relate to this book. It also sends a good message of advice saying that moving on with your life, after a tragety, can be hard but building up your feelings inside and hiding emotions, can be worst than letting it all out. I haven't read any other of Sarah Dessen's books, but I would like to read more.

Sarah Dessen writes in a way that's easy to follow. She doesn't exactly give all the details about the setting or characteristics, but she informs the reader of only the details needed. Also her dialogues, I thought, were very realistic. I could picture everyone's faces by just the way she punctuated the dislougue, then reassured the reader by one or two simple, precise word choices. I also liked how she used a lot of voice that sounded like a teenager's voice. I felt like I knew some of the charcters in the book because they reminded me of some of the people in our school. They were sort of like stereotypes.


"And what did you say?"
"I said it was," I told her.
"Macy!" kristy smakced her hand to her forehead. "God! What were you thinking?"
"I didn't know," I told her. Then, more softly, to myself, I said, "It's so unfair."
Kristy shook her head. "It's tragical." PG 359



I liked this book because i could relate to it. Not all about losing someone but just about like teenage years. This is relatable to all teenagers, I think, because it is written about a teenage girl who is going through life. I liked how Sarah Dessen writes about these topics that's why I think most teenage girls love her books so much. I think I'm going to continue to read some of her books in the near future.