Basically it's a story about a girl, Annabel, who has two sisters, an emotionally unavailable mum and has suffered some kind of big trauma. We don't know what the big trauma is until about 60% of the way through the book, except it's pretty obvious it's sexual abuse by the hands of her ex-best-friend's boyfriend.
There were a few problems I had with this book. I'll skip right past the bit where every single character is white and straight and gender-conforming, because from the books I've read this is pretty much par for the course with Sarah Dessen's work (BTW if anyone does know a Sarah Dessen book where she includes any kind of diversity at all then please let me know. This is a genuine request. I actually think the woman has writing skills and I'd be interested to see what she does with them).
The book starts off where Annabel goes back to school in September and is a social pariah. It's an intriguing premise and had a lot of potential. The problem is that after the first couple of chapters not very much happens at all for about 150 pages. Something bad has obviously happened to Annabel and there are heavy hints towards sexual abuse/rape, but she doesn't seem to be suffering the aftermath at all. I get that she's the sort of person who bottles things up and that she hates confrontation, but there are literally no signs that she has been affected by what has happened to her.
Instead, in her new social-pariah state, she befriends another social outcast, a guy who has anger management issues and who is the biggest Music Nazi I've every read about.
Annabel's new friend, Owen, has very definite views on music and spends a lot of time mansplaining to Annabel how all the music she likes is rubbish and how she should be listening to Peruvian nose harp orchestras instead. He just comes across as a total bell-end and the only reason I could see for Annabel hanging out with him was that she literally had no other options. Unsurprisingly it turns into a romance, but I could not get behind it at all. It just made Annabel look like such a weak girl and everything felt so ... tepid.
Eventually I started skimming which was a real shame. The story picks up again towards the end when details of her abuse get revealed but by then it was too late to completely redeem this book.
A secondary storyline is about Annabel's sister's eating disorder. I was interested to see this because I had hopes that it would pick the momentum up a bit, but Whitney recovered from her eating disorder in the most problem-free way ever. Like, no relapses, no sneaking about, no struggle that I could see. If only every victim of an eating disorder had this much luck in their recovery.
It's weird - Sarah Dessen has done a couple of books I've really liked, and a couple that I didn't like at all. This has fallen squarely into the second camp. I won't stop reading her books but I guess I'll just be a bit wary in future.
2 stars