Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen

Beloved young adult author, Sarah Dessen, recently published her ninth book, Along for the Ride. This story focuses on recent high school graduate, Auden, who slowly begins to realize all the things she missed out on during high school because she chose to focus on her education. Spending the summer with her father, step-mother, and newborn baby sister, in the remote cottage, beach-side community of Colby, only furthers this realization. During her last summer before going off to attend university, Auden, works at her step-mother’s boutique, which exposes her to a whole new world of “girl”: gossip, boys, and friendship.

Auden, in addition to having missed out on many social forays of teen-dom, also suffers from insomnia. She hasn’t slept normally for years, and she spends her night driving around the small cottage town drinking coffee. These all-night adventures eventually lead to a friendship with Eli, a local loner, who also seems to also suffer from insomnia. Both have emotional obstacles they need to overcome, and during the summer they learn to rely on one another and face the many things that may hold them back from living the lives they desire.

Similarly to other Dessen works, this story is character driven. Readers will find themselves attached to the characters and the world in which they live. Other books in the Moore Young Adult collection by Dessen are: That Summer, Lock & Key, Just Listen, The Truth about Forever, This Lullaby, Dreamland, Keeping the Moon, and Someone like You.

How to Build a House, by Dana Reinhardt

Harper is a 17 year old girl from Los Angeles who has decided to spend her summer with a volunteer program in Tennessee that is building houses for tornado victims. All the teenagers in the program are on one team, with a guru/type adult leader who travels the world building for people in need. He teaches/oversees the construction of their house, and (supposedly) keeps their behavior in line as well. Harper needs to be away from her home, since her dad has recently gotten divorced. Not from her mother, who’s dead, but from her stepmother who took her mother’s place when Harper was seven. She’s also lost two stepsisters to the conflict, one older and one who was her best friend. Obviously the story is about rebuilding, and not just a house. What’s ironic is that you get absolutely no details on how she or the others learn to do anything with carpentry, just some initial muscle pain and how hot it is to tar a roof in the Tennessean summer. When you hear about any construction, they all seemed to learn effortlessly, since the house ends up being beautiful. But you don’t miss that when you’re reading the book, because all the focus is on the two narratives which interchange throughout: Harper’s preceding year in Los Angeles, and her present summer. The narratives are all about relationships, mostly boys and whether they like you or not. Girls (and boys) can relate to Harper’s uneasiness and insecurity about herself, but you never understand why she is that way. The way she talks to her father is bold to the point of insulting, calling him on every weakness, but he just seems to take it. And there’s a hint that she was maybe overweight (?), since Harper in the beginning says she “can’t” wear jeans, but manages to don a pair at the end and look terrific. As one Amazon reviewer mentions, Harper’s Tennessee boyfriend (of the homeless family) is pretty unbelievable, saying everything he feels and never making a stupid move. Of course there’s sex in the book as well, and Ms. Reinhardt creates the illusion that it’s totally wonderful and never any problems about infection or pregnancy or getting in over their heads. Ms. Reinhardt writes well, but might be advised to dig a little deeper into her characters’ lives and actions.