Someone Like You Review

Book Review #9: Someone Like You by Sarah Dessen

Overall Rating: 8.1/10

Plot: 8/10

Characters: 8.5/10

Writing: 9/10

Originality: 7/10

Sample Passage: The dam was groaning, opening, as I twisted in Macon’s arms, suddenly terrified, all the noise and light and the world so far below us.  ”Macon,” I said, trying to pull away, back toward the path.  ”I should-” But then he pulled me back in, kissing me hard, his hands smoothing my hair, and I closed my eyes to the light, the noise, the water so far below, and I felt it for the first time.  That exhilaration, the whooshing feeling of being on the edge and holding, the world spinning madly around me.  And I kissed him back hard, letting loose that girl from the early summer and the Grand Canyon. At that moment, suspended as free-falling, I could feel her leaving me.

Genre: Teenage Realistic Fiction
Ages: 14 and up 

Number of Pages: 281 | Hardcover Edition
Published: in 1998 by Viking, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.

Summary: Ever since one hot, summer day, Halley has always had her best friend Scarlett to help her with her problems and look out for her, even while Scarlett was in a serious relationship with her first love, Michael. But Scarlett now needs Halley more than ever when Michael dies, and Scarlett finds out she’s carrying his baby.  Unfortunately, Halley has problems of her own, when she has a bad boy for a boyfriend and a famous teen psychologist for a mother.  Things are anything but perfect in Halley and Scarlett’s life, and with a baby on the way, things are about to get even crazier.

Review: Almost all of Sarah Dessen’s books are the same.  There’s a bad relationship between the main character and her parents, there’s some sort of a romance, the main character has always had to be strong for someone else, and everything turns out perfectly at the end, with a major cheesy realization for more than one of the main characters.  Since this was one of Dessen’s first novel. fortunately I found it a little more original than the others, even though it had the same plot idea.

Unlike some of Dessen’s other books that start with a flashback, this book starts right in on the action, which ended up being a good and bad thing. A good thing because it keeps you interested, and a bad thing because some things that might have had significance if you knew the characters better were instead just minor details that you could skim right by. At the beginning ofSomeone Like You, Scarlett’s boyfriend Michael dies, and right away you introduce what are supposed to be the two main relationships in the book: the relationship between Scarlett and Halley, and the relationship between Halley and her mom.  

One thing that I did not like about this book was Scarlett and Halley’s relationship.  I want to know more about their past.  Generally one of Dessen’s strong points is building fantastic relationships between characters, sometimes even being too detailed, but this time I just felt like Dessen explained how they met, and that’s about it. I wanted to know more about Scarlett, and why she is how she is. 

The mother-daughter relationships in Dessen’s books are very interesting, but often repetitive. Someone Like You contained the example of the controlling mother who wants her daughter to do exactly what she thinks is the right thing to do.  Finally, you have Halley and Mason’s (her boyfriend) relationship, which I hated.  You could tell that Mason just wasn’t a good person. He was at first, but then he tried to get Halley to go out in the night with him even after she was grounded. And then he pressured her to go beyond her comfort zone.    Most of the guys in Dessen’s books are very quirky, unusual, but nice; this guy was just a jerk. 

I also wasn’t a fan of the main character, Halley.  Sometimes throughout the book I felt a need to enter that world and shake her, because I’m tired of these sappy romance novels with extremely weak female characters who will risk it all for a guy.  Thankfully, Scarlett was a very strong female character, so she balanced it out a little bit. I could analyze this book all day, but I just wanted to give you guys some background on the characters.

The plot is intriguing, I find it interesting to read books on teen pregnancies, because each character is different in books, with the way they handle it and so forth. Also you wonder what’s going to happen with Halley and Mason.  It still kind of had the famous Plateau Effect, where there might have been one major hill or a bunch of little ones, but the rest had about as much interest as a wheat field in Kansas. A.K.A: Not that much. The ending was a little abrupt as well. I wanted to know more about what happened! I was pretty disappointed with that ending.

As far as originality goes, this book was pretty much your typical teen drama novel, and, if you know Dessen and her type of writing, your typical Sarah Dessen novel. I found this one to be a little more original than most, because the main character wasn’t the one with the biggest problem.  It was a side character. It’s just too bad that Dessen didn’t focus on that a little bit more. Dessen is always very good with her description in her writing. I always find her way of explaining how people feel so elegant.  I love the way she writes.

Overall: I often complain about Sarah Dessen’s books and their lack of originality, but if you like these types of books than this is one of the better ones, one of the ones worth reading.  And for those of you who like strong female characters and books with a lot of action, make room on your bookshelf (which we ALL need) and get another book instead.

Coming up Next: Blue Moon by Alyson Noel