by Sarah Dessen
ages: 13+
First sentence: “Scarlett Thomas has been my best friend for as long as I can remember.”
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I had a hard time with this one.
It’s not because the story was awful, or the characters were unsympathetic, or the writing banal… no: this time, I can honestly say it was me. (Warning: moralistic rant ahead…)
See, the book is about a girl — Halley — whose best friend, Scarlett, finds out she’s pregnant with her boyfriend’s kid (it only took once!). She turns to Halley for support, just as Halley begins to pull away from her uber-controlling mom (if I’m EVER that bad, will someone please shoot me?) and falls into a serious relationship of her own. I think the book was supposed to be about friendship, about a girl trying to find her own way and her own strength (as opposed to just listening to her mom all the time), and while I can respect that, I had issues.
On the one hand: at least Scarlett didn’t get an abortion, although that’s what her mom really wanted her to do. I can accept that. On the other hand: she kept the baby. When I was 16, my best friend got pregnant, and decided to keep the baby. While I was not nearly as sympathetic as Halley was (shoot: I wasn’t sympathetic at all… devastated was more like it….), I did see how keeping the baby ruined my friend’s life. No, that’s not the way it has to be, but… it’s a hell of a lot harder to make it through high school when you have a kid at 16. And it bothered me that that was the choice Scarlett wanted to make. All that said, Scarlett being pregnant had an interesting effect on Halley’s decision on whether or not to have sex with her boyfriend.
On the one hand: I can understand Halley’s mother’s desire to help steer her daughter down a safe path. Isn’t that what all parents want for their kids: for them to make right choices and lead successful lives? On the other hand: There’s a difference between guiding and controlling, and this mom was controlling. It made me — as an adult — uncomfortable, and I wasn’t surprised that Halley took to sneaking around and withdrawing from her mom. I’m also not convinced that, by the end of the story her mom’s really changed. Changing, perhaps… and maybe that’s all Dessen really wanted to portray.
Moralistic rant over. I’m not saying it’s a bad book, just one that I had a bad reaction to. Maybe you’ll like it better…
The Book Nut 
Actually, this sounds like one I'd be really interested in. My high school was one of the top two schools in the nation for teen pregnancies, so I knew tons of girls who were pregnant. I knew some that got abortions, some that did adoptions, some who kept the babies, many that dropped out of school, many whose grandparents ended up raising the baby…it'd be interesting to see what the book has to say on all that. I've not read anything by Sarah Dessen yet, and my first will be Lock and Key because that's what I own, but I'm going to up this one on my list.
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Amanda, I'm glad my rant didn't turn you off. I hope you have a better experience with it than I did…. (Lock and Key is a good one to start with, by the way.)
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My sister got pregnant when she was 17, and it was hell for her deciding what to do. (She immediately ruled out abortion, but she was planning on an open adoption for a long time, while my mom said she'd regret that later. I didn't give any opinions, so that she could always talk to me, but I was in Russia, which made things harder!)
Anyway, she finally decided to keep my niece, and since she's had a ton of support from my mom (and my dad), it certainly didn't ruin her life. It changed it, yes, but now she thinks about knowing her child was out there being raised by someone else and that really upsets her.
Just offering up another angle! 🙂
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Eva, thanks for offering up another point of view. I'm glad your sister had the support my friend didn't (and that I wasn't able to give her) and that it's all worked out for the best. It really is funny how life works sometimes.
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Thanks for this review. I can see many sides with this issue. My brother is adopted because his biological parents were teens and my dad and stepmother couldn't have kids. On the other hand I went to high school with a girl who had my exact birthday, had a child our Junior year and then came back our Senior year and she had one heck of a time. On the other hand, someone else I know's girlfriend had an abortion and he was devastated, and then on the other hand again, I'm a mom. I am also encouraged to find that sometimes other people bring their life experiences when they read and can have trouble with a book everyone else loves.
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Funny that I read this review while watching MTV's Sixteen and Pregnant online 🙂 Have you seen that show? Holy eye opening. Some of those parents were OVER the top – and they were REAL!
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