Keeping the Moon Review

Book Review #4: Keeping the Moon by Sarah Dessen

Overall Rating: 8/10

Plot: 7/10

Writing: 9/10

Characters: 8/10

Sample Passage: And there was that sparkle in her eye, bright enough to reach across an ocean and still get me.  My mother believed, and she could make you do it, too.  She’d believed me all the way out of forty-five-and-a-half pounds.  She’d believed us from living out of the car to having anything we wanted.  And now, she would believe millions of people from depressed, Burger-King-scarfing caterpillars into gorgeous, thin, brightly colored butterflies.  Later, as I put away the dishes, I caught a glimpse of myself in the window: my hair different, the new shape of my eyebrows affecting my entire face.  A work in progress, Isabel had allowed as she stood back and admired what she’d done.  I’d been a caterpillar for so long, and although I had shed my cocoon in losing my fat, my coat, and the years that led me here, I wasn’t a butterfly yet.  For now, all I could do was stand on the ground and look up at the sky, not quite ready yet to leap and rise.

Number of Pages:  228 | Hardcover Edition
Published: 1999 by Viking, a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers 

Summary: Colie Sparks, formerly known as fat and “easy,” is dropped off in the small town of Colby, North Carolina to live with her aunt Mira while her mother, the famous Kiki Sparks—master of exercise—tours Europe.  Just when she thinks it’s going to be the worst summer ever, she finds herself a waitress at the Last Chance restaurant, along with two older waitresses who seem to know their place in life.  With the help of Morgan and Isabel, Colie just might find her place too.

Though I did not dislike this book, it definitely wasn’t anything fantastic.  It was just…average.  Basically just average on every level except the writing, which I think Sarah Dessen definitely excels in.  The plot I would compare to a wide, open plain, with grass in it and….not much else.

This plot was very anti-climatic, predictable, and somewhat boring.  There’s not a whole lot of action, most of it is basically learning Colie’s backstory and why she has her insecurities.  After you read a lot of Sarah Dessen books, it starts to feel like you’re reading the same book over and over again, just with different characters and slightly different side plots and conclusions.

In most of Dessen’s novels, there are a lot of things that stay the same.  There’s always some sort of a broken mother-daughter relationship.  With this book there was, the only difference was it wasn’t exactly resolved in the end like in most of Dessen’s books.  I felt like it actually lacked the depth of relationships that Dessen usually puts into her books.  

There’s always some sort of a guy who is very quirky and different—either he’s an artist, or he likes weird music, or something like that—who helps the main character see who she truly is.  And they always end up together.  This book had that sort of a relationship.

I know it’s sounding like I didn’t like this book very much, but that’s not true.  Most of the writing, as usual, is beautiful, I feel like the words flow so well together that it becomes poetry-like.  And most of the characters are downright hilarious, especially the two waitresses. Although I really didn’t like Isabel, for those who have read the book, I thought that the way she handled her friendship with Morgan was definitely, as Morgan would say, impaired.  And she seemed too immature at first.

So basically what I’m trying to say is that this is the book for someone who just wants a light read where you basically can predict how it’s going to end, and where it’s so cheesy that you really don’t care about how it’s going to end, but can still have fun with it.  And I’m not really quite sure who wants to do that, but if you do, knock yourself out. 

Coming up Next: The Maze Runner by James Dashner and Silent to the Bone by E.L. Konigsburg