Someone Like You and That Summer by Sarah Dessen Book Reviews
About
Author: Sarah Dessen
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary Romance
Other Sarah Dessen Book Reviews
Someone Like You
“The truth was I knew, after all those flat January days, that I deserved better. I deserved I love you and kiwi fruits and flowers and warriors coming to my door besotted with love. I deserved pictures of my face in a million expressions, and the warmth of a baby’s kick under my hand. I deserved to grow, and to change, to become all the girls I could ever be over the course of my life, each one better than the last.”
(pg. 243)
Synopsis
Halley has always followed in the wake of her best friend, Scarlett. But when Scarlett learns that her boyfriend has been killed in a motorcycle accident, and that she’s carrying his baby, she’s devastated. For the first time ever, Scarlett really needs Halley. Their friendship may bend under the weight, but it’ll never break—because a true friendship is a promise you keep forever.
Review
Spoilers Contained Below
To the summer lovers,
It has always been my goal to read every Sarah Dessen book and now I can check off this title. I can thoroughly say that this was kind of a very different voice than what I’m used to from a Sarah Dessen novel, but it really just emphasized how much Sarah Dessen has grown as a writer and how she really is the prime example of someone whose writing gets better over the years.
Someone like you touches on grieving someone, first crushes, and teenage pregnancy—-all topics very relevant to teens and in life in general. The book starts off with the main character Halley at this camp that her mom wanted to go to when she gets a call from her best friend, Scarlett, about how this guy they have known since they were little passed away from a car accident. Getting out of camp, Halley goes to comfort her best friend who loved Michael Sherwood, the boy in the accident. What Halley didn’t know was how serious their love was. Scarlett was expecting Michael’s baby.
Not a lot of books back then, or even now, talk about teen pregnancy even though a lot of teens still do get pregnant at 16. It makes me wonder how this book was received when it was published because back then, when not a lot of people liked the idea of teens being pregnant young—–it was considered sinful, taboo, or something to be ashamed of. In our growing culture today, I think teen pregnancy isn’t as looked down upon because in some ways, parents are kind of used to the idea of teen pregnancies and it’s not as shocking. That doesn’t mean that I think that teens should get pregnant young, but it just means that I think parents don’t lash out about it as much because there isn’t this huge shame over it anymore. Which is good because being pregnant as a teen has to be one of the hardest things. I mean, you’re a teenage girl with your whole life ahead of you and now you have to think about your baby and how to provide for him/her, as well as try to navigate growing up as well. And I have the utmost respect for any teen mom who tries to work hard for her baby and herself because that’s no easy feat.
I just loved the role that Halley played in Scarlett’s pregnancy. They were best friends, but to me they felt like sisters and I LOVED that. I loved how Halley would be there whenever Scarlett needed her. She even skipped school to pick Scarlett up at the clinic when her mom wanted her to get an abortion and I liked how Halley read all these books alongside Scarlett to better understand her pregnancy. I think Halley deserves a lot of credit because she supported Scarlett from the get go about what she wanted—-to keep the baby—-and Halley never, not once, questioned Scarlett’s judgement or said that she was dumb for getting pregnant or that she should get an abortion. Halley was there for Scarlett and did everything she could to help her be as comfortable as she could be as a pregnant teen. I mean, get you a friend as great as Halley. Truly.
I found it cute how Halley went to the lamaze classes with Scarlett, the doctors appointments, and everything in between. She truly was supportive in the best way. Even when Scarlett would lash out in sass to Halley, she would understand that it just came from a place of being an expecting mother. I really loved their friendship.
My favorite moment between Scarlett and Halley was the prom night when Scarlett went with Cameron in her custom dress and Halley went with Noah. Already when I heard the word prom and that Scarlett was going to be there, I was like, she’s going to give birth at prom. I just KNEW it. It was the perfect moment for her to give brith because, of course, this is a gosh darn YA novel and it wouldn’t be a YA novel with an unexpected birth at the most inconvenient place.
As predicted, Scarlett’s water breaks and it becomes this whole frenzy of getting her to the hospital but she doesn’t want to be in an ER, so Macon drives them to the hospital. Halley’s with Scarlet through every step of the way and when their in the hospital room, I just bursted out in laughter with how Scarlett kept insisting and assign the doctors for the drugs 😂. She was like “Can I have some drugs, please?” Because that’s the first thing you want when you’re giving birth: drugs. But who I’m I to judge? I have so much respect for Scarlett though.
As much as Scarlett was in pain, Halley was completely overwhelmed because she didn’t know what to do or how to be there for Scarlett—-she was just a teen too, but in some ways Halley has taken on a father figure role in Scarlett’s pregnancy. Halley’s mom shows up at the hospital and she reassures to her daughter that it’s going to be okay and that Scarlett needs her. That has to be a lot of pressure for Halley, but she knows she has to be there for her friend because she’s feeling more scared and more pain than she is.
Then Scarlett gives birth to a healthy baby girl that she names Grace, which I thought was so cute because it sounds so angelic and classy. My heart also swelled with the best type of love when Scarlett said the name was going to be Grace Halley 💗 after her best friend who was there for her. I honestly love their friendship and how much love you can feel between the two of them. They’re honestly people I see living next to each other in the future (still) and having kids who grow up together for years. They’re going to be those moms—-the best.
I thought it was also very cute how the whole school was in the waiting room in support of Scarlett. I just loved that because, again, I don’t think teenage pregnancy was accepted as much in the past, but to see how much love and support was there for Scarlett just warmed me from the inside out. I thought it was kind of weird though that Scarlett’s mom was waiting in the waiting room to see her own daughter and her granddaughter. Wouldn’t the mom have been the first one toes have access to the room or something and not Halley and Halley’s mom? But I don’t know.
There was this moment at the end of the book where Halley’s watching Scarlett sleep and all she can think about was what type of girl Grace would grow up to be. She pondered about how Grace would have all the strong, beautiful qualities of her mother, grandmother, and Scarlett’s mom—–how Grace would grow up with the best parts of those who loved her. I loved how the story ends on such a hopeful note about Halley wondering what would become of all of them in the end and where the future would take them.
Because growing up is a hard journey, one thing Halley knows all too well.
As much as Scarlett had her own journey, Halley had hers too. It’s kind of hard to picture Halley as just 16 because she sounds so mature for her age and other times not. She would do little teenage rebellion things like sneaking out of the house and go to parties all because she wanted to take a jab at her mom. Another interesting thing about this book was the mother-daughter dynamic. Halley and her mom used to be so close, where they would tell each other everything and spend so much time laughing tighter. But all of that changed after the summer at the Grand Canyon when she started to grow up and hide things from her mom.
I think every girl or boy goes through a time in their life where they just feel different and family relationships change because theirs parts of that girl or boys life that they know that their parent wouldn’t be proud of anymore. I think it’s kind of a teens way of not disclosing the truth to save their parents “angelic” image of them and when teens keep these secrets, it creates that tension and rift. So I understood why Halley and her mom weren’t close anymore because Halley just wanted a bit more freedom to make her own choices and mistakes, but her mom was kind of scared to see her grow up and to make those choices, so the mom thought that is she made the choices for Halley, things would be okay. But it wasn’t. Teens as much as they can be irresponsible, should be able to chose for themselves—–to live and to learn. And as a parent, if you restrict your teen or coddle them too much, they’ll just want to run away and break free even more.
Part of me felt that was why Halley would go to parties or do some dumb stuff.
But at least she had the good sense to walk away from Macon when things got to much. The thing is, I never felt a connection to Macon and Halley as a couple. Like they were cute when he was sweet talking her or was nice to her, but he always kept her at a distance that made it hard for me to like him completely. I felt like their relationship really depicted a high school relationship honestly in the way that some boys come into your life with this “big reputation” and then they woo you over only to get into your pants and if they don’t they dump you. I mean, how sick is it that that’s the truth.
Macon would always try to touch up on her and to unbutton her jeans and then when she would back away from him he would get angry. I WAS ANGRY WITH HIM!! Like if a girl doesn’t want to, she doesn’t want to, which brings me to another topic I enjoyed about this story: losing your virginity. As a teen, there’s all this pressure about virginity. If you’re a virgin, your dumb and if you’re not, you’re some prized champion or a girl player (double standard for boys and girls). But I don’t want to get into the whole double standard, but I do want to say that if you’re in high school and you feel like you should lose it because everyone else is, trust me, don’t. Do it when you’re ready and when you feel it’s safe and comfortable. Don’t do it because you think everyone is doing it—-because gosh knows, not everyone is. I’m not saying to do it at a young age in high school, I’m just saying trust yourself when you feel ready. And if you do do it, be safe and get yourself and your partner tested because there’s nothing embarrassing about protecting yourself and your significant other.
So the fact that Macon was pressuring her and saying things like I’ve been waiting and all of that, just made me so MAD! You’ve been waiting three months, boo hoo!!! Cry me a river for your first world problems and keep it in your hormonal pants! 🙄 I couldn’t’ STAND HIM and how he made her feel pressured to do it or he would break up with her. Honey, he doesn’t love you, he loves what you can give him. Respect yourself enough to know the difference.
Halley starts thinking that she should do it and so she starts asking Scarlett how she knew when she was ready and all that. I love how Scarlett gives her some sound advice, but yet Halley still thinks she should do it. So she plans the where and the when and is hyping herself up to do it, but we all know she dines’t want to. She feels like she has to. I just wanted to shake her and say, “You do not need to do this!” I could just tell by the way she was nervous and how she constantly questioned it that she didn’t want to or wasn’t ready.
Thank gosh they didn’t do it.
Since they didn’t do it, Macon drove home that night speeding his head off. You know this whole book, he always does something over the top with that darn car—-honk the horn to loud, rev the engine, drive too fast—–I just knew nothing good was going to come out of him and that car. It didn’t surprise me that they crashed because he’s an inconsiderate jerk. But what really boiled my potatoes was that he actually had the AUDUACITY to say I love you to her that night and then not show up at the hospital. Then he thinks he can go to her house, throw some pebbles at her window like he’s some sort of Romeo and make things better. UUUUUUGGHH! I wanted to throw a rock at his gosh darn teen hormonal head! Like dude, you suck!
But you know what my girl Halley did?!
She stood up to his dumb butt! He told him all the ways she deserved to be treated better and all the little things that she deserved from the kiwi fruits to the I love you and all of that and I was like, 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 APPPPPLAUDDS FOR HALLEY!!! Dump his butt! You did deserve better and thank you for recognizing that.
When she got back inside the house, the mother was there was like “Things are right back to the way they were, I see.” And then they have this whole conversation where she stands up to the mom as well.
“Why don’t you ever wait a second and see what I’m planning, or thinking, before you burst in with your opinions and ideas? You never give me a chance.”
“. . . I will never learn . . . until you let me”
(pg. 245)
Which goes back to what I was saying in how the mom was coddling her and not letting her make her own mistakes for her to learn from them. Even her own daughter recognized that. Being yelled at like that really put the mom in her place to realize that maybe she has been unfair to her daughter because she thought Halley would turn out to be another “rebel” teen, when honestly Halley has some good sense on her shoulder and a good group of support in her court.
The mom and Halley didn’t completely make up by the end of the book, but when in that hospital room she respected her mom and still loved her. No matter how complicated your parental relationships are, sometimes there will always be that love there.
I just really enjoyed the diverse array of topics this book touched on and how it did it seamlessly in a way that was interesting. I also really felt the honesty of what it means to be a teen, which I think everyone can relate to.
That Summer
“Sometimes the people you choose to believe are wrong.”
(pg. 192)
Synopsis
As far as Haven is concerned, there’s just too much going on.
Everything is changing, and she’s not sure where she fits in.
Then her sister’s old boyfriend shows up, sparking memories of the summer when they were all happy and everything was perfect. . . .
But along the way, Haven realizes that sometimes change is a good thing.
Review
Spoilers Contained Below
It’s crazy to think that this is the first book Sarah Dessen wrote. It was short, simple, and sweet
That Summer follows Haven who’s 15 years old and who’s been through a lot in the last couple of years. Her father recently divorced her mother and has married Lorna Queen from the weather show that the dad and her do together. Haven’s not a huge fan of Lorna and calls her the Weather Pet, which makes her sound like a dog. In some ways I can relate to Haven in knowing what it’s like to have parents divorce at a young age. Nowadays, it feels like more kids have parents that divorce at a young age, which is beyond sad, but I just want you to know, if you’re like me or Haven, it’s not your fault whatsoever and things will hurt, but they will be okay.
As much as I can understand Haven, there’s a part of me that truly didn’t connect with her character and I think it’s because she was portrayed as a distant teen to her family. I felt kind of bad for Haven because she was literally put on the back burner to her sister, Ashley’s wedding, and no one seemed to care about her all that much and how difficult her life was with the dad remarrying and all this change. Her mom would sit down to try to talk to her sometimes, but I feel like Haven was always receptive to those conversations because, again, as a teen it’s always hard to open up to people in that way.
There’s also the fact that Haven just felt different in her own body. If there’s one thing Sarah Dessen did nice in this book was describe the awkwardness of literally growing up. I loved the way Sarah would describe Haven as constantly growing, bony, lanky, gangly, and tall. It just made you really get a sense for how uncomfortable Haven felt because she was growing so fast. It also didn’t help that her sister was kind of insensitive to her growing up. If there’s one thing that girls’ don’t like, it’s hearing what they know. We eat too much? We don’t want to hear, “Are you going to eat that all?” You have a zit on your face? We don’t want to hear, “You have a zit on your face.” Or if you’re tall, we don’t want to hear, “You’re tall.” It’s uncomfortable and no one wants to hear about it.
The sister was so insensitive to Haven a lot during this book and she took bridezilla to a whole other level. Like I get that you’re getting married and all, but like Taylor Swift says, “You Need to Calm Down.” She would say all these little snide things about Haven’s height and always talk down about her sister and I get you’re under stress, but have some hospitality. I liked that the mom tried to put Ashely in her place sometimes and would tell her to be nicer to her sister because it’s such an accurate depiction of what a family relationship is like where if one sibling is rude to the other, the parents tell that person to be nicer 😆. It had to suck to be Haven sometimes because she could literally hear her mom and sister talking through an air vent about her. She must have some pretty thin walls or very loud family members who don’t know how to be quiet. Then there was the dress shopping scene where Haven apparently grew too tall for her wedding dress and Ashley was like, “Can you stop growing.” She can’t control how she grows!!
Even though there were moments where I wanted to hit Ashley upside the head, she kind of is a decent sister and at least recognized when she went too far or when she needed to apologize.
Haven’s mother on the other hand was an interesting character. I really like how the divorce didn’t bring her down all that much and that she was going to go travel Europe with her friends. I think that’s actually good for the mother to get away and really focus on herself after all that happened. I just really felt for Haven though because her sister was moving out, her dad was moving on, and now her mom was traveling halfway across the globe. It just felt like they were all leaving Haven behind to live their own life and Haven was only 15 and could barely take care of herself rationally. She was just a kid and needs a strong support system.
Speaking of a support system, the dad was just very uninvolved or caring about his family. He only just tolerated them because he was the father but I didn’t feel like he truly cared. There was that moment when Haven had a bad day and was supposed to go to her weekly dinner’s with her dad, so she sat on the porch swing seeing if he would come up to the house to get her. I was completely rooting for Haven because I wanted the dad to cross that “imaginary line” he put up from his old and new life to take those steps to talk to her daughter. But you know what he did? He stayed in the darn car and honked like he’s some 50s guy picking a chick up for a hot date. This is your daughter here! Go find her!!! She’s not going to go to you, you go to her—-you’re the adult here.
He never did.
My heart dropped for Haven.
My hand hit the book in anger.
What a dumb dumb.
You know who else was a dumb dumb?
That lady at the shoe place who had the utter AUDACITY to be that rude to Haven when she went to go check if there was the shoe and kindly said there wasn’t. You know what though, it doesn’t shock me how people can be so rude because when you work in retail or in any situation, there’s always the gosh darn rude customers who haven’t been raised right. When Haven went up to that lady afterwards and flung a shoe at her, I APPLAUDED!!! 👏🏼
I would have hit her with all the SHOES 👡
When she did, I was like she’s oh so fired! But who the heck cares because gosh darn that woman deserved it!
Probably my favorite part of the book.
Another key part of the story was Sumner who I confused with the word summer, which was kind of confusing. The thing about Sumner is that he sounds like a genuinely nice person now, but back then I think Haven really put him on a pedestal as the apex of a man. You could really tell she liked liked Sumner back then and even now because of how everyone of Ashely’s boyfriends represented a period in her life and Sumner’s period was a decent one. He treated Haven with kindness then and she always thought back to that summer and how happy everyone and everything seemed that I think she never fully got closure with it, so that’s why she always reminisced about that summer—-how good it was.
But that summer was never as good as it was. Sumner wasn’t as good as he was.
He cheated on Ashely with Ashley’s friend and it hurt her.
“He’s just a boy, Haven. He was the first to really hurt me, but hes’ just a boy. There were a lot of them . . . It’s too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first boy is lawyers the hardest to get over, Haven. It’s just the way the world works.”
(pg. 191-2)
Talking to her sister about what really happened that summer, made Haven finally see it in a new life. To Haven, Sumner was her first real girl crush and that’s why she couldn’t get over him. When he randomly came back into her life, she felt like it was fate because she loved Sumner and all that she remembered from that Sumner, but she didn’t really know him the way Ashley did. That’s why it hurt Haven to figure out he wasn’t who she thought he was. Which is true in a lot of cases with crushes. When you spend so much time romanticizing your first crush, you really create this idea that their perfect, that when you see that their not, it crushes you in the end as the name intends—-crush. It hurts because it mattered and it hurt because it’s the first person you really fell for and when you fall, there’s always going to be some sort of bruise or cut or hurt.
I really liked the ending when Ashley got married to Lewis was a nice guy and tolerated her. For a second, I thought hey wouldn’t get married because of how much they would fight, especially over the bachorlette party, but they made up. The book really just ended on another hopeful not of new beginnings and hope for their family. Even though she had all these perfections about that summer with Sumner, this summer was another memorable one because it was one where there was “weddings and beginnings.” Even though Sumner wasn’t the boy she dreamt of, Haven was going to be okay because she had so much to look forward to. Sure it would be hard to move on from her first crush, but she would.
It’s just such a good story about the realities and heartbreak of what it means to love for the first time and to understand that sometimes the things we think about the past, was never really real. Enjoy the now.
There was also this mini subplot with Gwendolyn the model and how she had this huge nervous breakdown. Part of me felt like because Haven was depicted as always being so tall, that she would become a model or do the fashion show or something, but that never happened. I feel like there’s more to Gwendolyn’s story and the forest thing. Their plot line was kind of weird and I didn’t really connect to Gwendolyn or understood how Haven and her related, but I guess they understood summer memories together. Just seemed like a weird plot that I wasn’t invested in that much, but nevertheless an interesting character.
If you read any of these books, what were your favorite parts? Least favorite parts? Favorite summer memory? Let me know below in the comments as I love hearing from you 💕
And as always, with love,
Ratings
Someone Like You
3.67 Full Bloom Flowers
Characters: Sometimes it was hard to like Halley, but that’s because she’s just a typical teenager who’s trying to figure things out.
Plot: Like the different topics that this book touches on
Writing: Easy to follow along
Romance: Not a whole lot of romance relationship wise and Macon sucks, but I did enjoy Scarlett and Halley’s friendship.
That Summer
3.45 Full Bloom Flowers
Characters: The way that Haven is depicted and represented as an awkward teenage girl
Plot: The whole book was seamless in it’s story line except for the Gwendolyn part, which I wasn’t into as much. But the family dynamic and sister bonding was done beautifully.
Writing: This is the first Sarah Dessen book written and somehow she still managed to have a fine way with words. Of course, she has grown as a writer, but what a fantastic start to her career.
Romance: Not a lot of romance as more romanticizing.