Books by Sarah Dessen and Complete Book Reviews

Sarah Dessen, Author . Viking $16.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-670-03530-4
This modern-day romance narrated by a cynical heroine offers a balance of wickedly funny moments and universal teen traumas. High school graduate Remy has some biting commentary about love, including her romance-writer mother's betrothal to a...
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Sarah Dessen. HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray, $19.99 (448p) ISBN 978-0-06-293362-1
Dessen explores her signature themes of family and romance in this layered contemporary novel driven by anxiety-prone protagonist Emma Saylor’s curiosity about her late mother’s life. Emma’s mother, who succumbed to an overdose in 2011, left Emma...
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Sarah Dessen. Viking, $19.99 (368p) ISBN 978-0-425-29033-0
Seventeen-year-old Louna was in love once, but it ended in tragedy when her long-distance boyfriend, Ethan, was killed in a school shooting. Louna has since stopped believing she will find love again, though she is surrounded by constant reminders...
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Sarah Dessen. Viking, $19.99 (432p) ISBN 978-0-451-47470-4
Sydney Stanford and her family are devastated when her older brother, Peyton, paralyzes a local boy while driving drunk and is sent to jail. Sydney’s mother throws herself into supporting Peyton (while seeming to scarcely acknowledge his guilt), and
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Sarah Dessen. Viking, $19.99 (448p) ISBN 978-0-670-78560-5
Emaline has grown up happily in the quiet beach town of Colby, N.C. (a setting that will be familiar to Dessen’s many fans), where she lives with her mother, stepfather, and stepsisters. She’s been dating a handsome local boy, Luke, for four years;...
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Sarah Dessen, Viking, $19.99 (416p) ISBN 978-0-670-01294-7
Dessen's 10th novel is another smoothly written journey of self-discovery. Mclean Sweet, named for "the all-time winningest basketball coach of Defriese University," has moved four times in two years, following her father's job as a restaurant...
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Sarah Dessen, Author Puffin Books $5.99 (272p) ISBN 978-0-14-130269-0
The ill-starred pioneer family of Mary Jane Auch's Journey to Nowhere and Frozen Summer returns in The Road to Home. This installment, set in 1817, finds 13-year-old Remembrance Nye leading her younger siblings back from upstate New York to their...
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Sarah Dessen, Author Puffin Books $5.99 (208p) ISBN 978-0-14-038688-2
As her parents divorce and her sister gets married, teenage Haven finds herself out of place. PW noted in a starred review, ""Dessen's combination of unforgettable characters and unexpected events generates hilarity as well as warmth."" Ages 10-14. (
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Sarah Dessen, Author Orchard Books (NY) $16.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-531-09538-6
At five-foot-eleven (""and counting""), Haven is ""all bony elbows and acute angles, like a jigsaw puzzle piece that can only go in the middle, waiting for the others to fit around it to make it whole."" But it is not just a sudden growth spurt that
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Sarah Dessen, Author Viking Children's Books $17.99 (272p) ISBN 978-0-670-87778-2
Dessen's realistic portrayal of contemporary teens and their moral challenges breathes fresh life into well-worn themes of rebellion and first love. Halley has always been close to her mother, a therapist who publishes books about adolescent...
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Sarah Dessen, Author . Viking $19.99 (383p) ISBN 978-0-670-01194-0
Studious good girl Auden, named for the poet, makes a snap decision to spend her summer before college at her father's beach house rather than with her mother, a professor whose bad habits include male grad students. Auden's parents...
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Sarah Dessen, Author . Viking $18.99 (422p) ISBN 978-0-670-01088-2
Dessen (Just Listen ; see Profile) inverts a familiar fairy tale: What if Cinderella got the prince, the castle and all its accoutrements, but wasn't remotely interested? After her mother abandons her, Ruby Cooper is flying below the radar of...
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Sarah Dessen, Author . Viking $17.99 (371p) ISBN 978-0-670-06105-1
Annabel Greene, who narrates, lives with her gorgeous sisters in a glass house designed by their architect father, in Dessen's (This Lullaby ) familiar suburb of Lakeview. Predictably, the surface perfection masks trouble. Oldest sister Kirsten,
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Sarah Dessen, Author . Penguin/ Speak $7.99 (
, $7.99 ISBN ) ISBN 978-0-14-250155-9
According to PW 's starred review, "This modern-day romance narrated by a cynical heroine offers a balance of wickedly funny moments and universal teen traumas." Ages 12-up. (Apr.)
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Sarah Dessen, Author . Viking $16.99 (384p) ISBN 978-0-670-03639-4
In this contemporary romance, Dessen (This Lullaby ) gracefully balances comedy with tragedy and introduces a complex heroine worth getting to know. While recovering from her father's sudden death, Macy clings to things that are safe and...
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Sarah Dessen, Author . Puffin $5.99 (256p) ISBN 978-0-14-230067-1
Caitlin's perfect sister runs away from home and she finds herself trying to fill the gap the absence creates. "The characterizations have an unmistakable depth," said PW. Ages 12-up. (Feb.)
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Sarah Dessen, read by Taylor Meskimen. Listening Library, unabridged, 10 CDs, 12.5 hrs., $60 ISBN 978-1-101-91542-4
In Dessen’s novel, the teenage Sydney comes to terms with the incarceration of her golden-boy brother Peyton while navigating a new high school and the vicissitudes of first love. Reader Meskimen’s excellent performance is centered on the unassuming,
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Sarah Dessen, read by Karissa Vacker. Listening Library, unabridged, 9 CDs, 10.5 hrs., $60 ISBN 978-1-5247-7742-5
Actor Vacker captures both humor and tragedy in Dessen’s latest YA novel, about a 17-year-old whose summer job is assisting her mother in her high-end wedding-planning business. Surrounded by a clientele of couples in love at work, Louna is...
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Sarah Dessen, Author, D. Brodie, Editor Viking Children's Books $17.99 (256p) ISBN 978-0-670-89122-1
Caitlin O'Koren has always had to follow in the footsteps of her perfect older sister, Cassandra (homecoming queen, soccer star, student body president, soup kitchen volunteer). When Cassandra runs away from home, Caitlin finds herself trying to...
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Sarah Dessen, Author, S. November, Editor Viking Children's Books $17.99 (240p) ISBN 978-0-670-88549-7
A plot description of this contemporary problem novel may make it sound like a kind of Cinderella story, but Dessen's (Someone Like You) ironic sense of humor and her knack for creating characters with both quirky personalities and universal...
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ARTICLES
  • High School Forever
  • Welcome to Sarahland
  • Children's Bookshelf Talks With Sarah Dessen
  • On the Road with Sarah Dessen
  • BEA 2013: Sarah Dessen: Summertime Is the Best Time
  • Four Questions with Sarah Dessen
  • YA Author Sarah Dessen Moves to HarperCollins
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