Third Quarter Outside Reading Book Review

Just Listen by Sarah Dessen. Penguin Books, 2006 Genre: Young Adult Fiction
Annabel Greene is a popular teenage girl that seems like she has the perfect life. She is a model and has the perfect family. Things start to change when she goes back to school because her best friend, Sophie, accuses her of sleeping with her boyfriend, when really he raped her. Annabel doesn’t tell anybody about this, so everybody thinks she’s a horrible person for doing that to her best friend.
“This is a believable work of fiction about learning to face complications by telling the truth,” a review states. “An outstanding book on how awful it can be to hold in your feelings, and how good it can feel once you set them free.”
At the same time Annabel is dealing with the painful losses of her friends, she is also dealing with family complications. Her sister, Whitney, is suffering from an eating disorder which is causing a lot of stress on her parents. Also, Annabel wants to quit modelling, since she has been doing it for a while, but can’t find the strength to tell her mom because she is afraid her mom won’t have anything else to make her happy.
Everybody ignores Annabel when she gets back to school because Sophie has told them what happened. She eats lunch by herself, but there is another outcast named Owen that eats lunch near her. Annabel always wants to know what his deal is because she always seems him with his iPod in his ears. One day, when Sophie causes a big scene about what happened over the summer, Owen talks to Annabel and offers to take her home. Annabel keeps all her emotions bottled up inside of her, which always makes her feel sick to her stomach. Over the course of the book, her and Owen starts a relationship by Owen helping her connect with her feeling through music.
While I was reading Just Listen, it reminded me of the book Someone Like You because they both are about teenage girls who are trying to get through the battles of high school drama. These girls both happen to find boys who help them through these struggles and they develop a relationship.
“Music is a total constant. That's why we have such a strong visceral connection to it, you know? Because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in your or the world, that one song says the same, just like that moment.” (319)
This book has made me realize that telling the truth, even if it scares you, will feel good once you finally find a way to say it. Holding things in, won’t make any situation better. I love Sarah Dessen’s writing style because she writes about everyday situations that girls face everyday. The way she creates her characters and uses the right amount of detail throughout the book makes me enjoy reading her books.