Sarah Dessen’s “The Truth About Forever” is an instant classic, and absolutely adorable. Rating: 4.5/5

*This is book #1/30 for my 2016 book challenge. You can take a look at the reading challenge here.

A long, hot summer… That’s what Macy has to look forward to while her boyfriend, Jason, is away at Brain Camp. Days will be spent at a boring job in the library, evenings will be filled with vocabulary drills for the SATs, and spare time will be passed with her mother, the two of them sharing a silent grief at the traumatic loss of Macy’s father.

But sometimes, unexpected things can happen—things such as the catering job at Wish, with its fun-loving, chaotic crew. Or her sister’s project of renovating the neglected beach house, awakening long-buried memories. Things such as meeting Wes, a boy with a past, a taste for Truth-telling, and an amazing artistic talent, the kind of boy who could turn any girl’s world upside down. As Macy ventures out of her shell, she begins to question her sheltered life.

I’m not a huge contemporary fiction fan. Every once in a while one will really grip me, and when that happens it is a wonderful reprieve from books that I normally read. Just my opinion of course, but it always seems that contemporary novels have less of a plot – it’s just normal people doing normal things “and something extraordinary happens”. Usually someone falls in love with someone ~*~random~*~ or someone “finds themselves” or someone gets in a fight with their parents because they don’t want to do dance/sports anymore. I don’t know… it’s just never really done much for me, so I usually tend to stay away.

My best friend and I were recently talking about books and she was absolutely beside herself that I hadn’t read The Truth About Forever, so I gave it a shot. I really enjoyed the book, and I also really enjoyed the characters. Sarah Dessen is fantastic at writing complex characters with complex relationships and emotions, and I was really struck by Macy for the majority of the book. She does this thing where you wish her characters were real so that you could actually interact with them yourself. Delia and the rest of the Wish crew were fantastic, and Monica was certainly my favorite. In fact, my favorite part of the entire book is when she finally speaks two full sentences. The most emotions I felt while reading the book were towards Jason and Macy’s mother Deborah. They were characters that I just felt such disdain for, whether I was meant to or not, and I really just kind of wanted to shake everyone.

Really, my main problem with this book (and books similar to this one) is that I feel like one event or moment is built up throughout the duration of the book and then doesn’t happen until the very end. It’s a brief, momentary moment and then it’s over and then shortly after, like 10 pages later, the entire book is done. It leaves me wanting more, not in an “oh my god that was so crazy/good I need more!” but in an “oh my god, you mean to tell me this was building up for 350+ pages and that’s it?!?!” way. It’s frustrating to me.

Overall, though, the book was very good. There is no denying that Sarah Dessen is a fantastic writer, and I love how she is able to craft such vastly different characters in such an effortless way. Each character has great development and their dialogue and actions all feel genuine. While I was slightly disappointed, that doesn’t take away from how great the rest of the book was.

Rating: 

If you’re interested in reading my GoodReads updates from this book you can do so here. I must say, they’re quite entertaining. It will tell you exactly what I was thinking on certain pages.

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