Karolisha liked a trivia question:
What is Henry's profession in The Time Traveler's Wife? see if you know the answer »

Karolisha read and liked Francis's review of Along for the Ride:

"I'd give this book 3 1/2 stars. OK, let's see, comparing with my other Sarah Dessen book reviews, this book is about (fill-in-the-blank):

* A girl whose rather atypical name is: (Auden)
* working through her insecurities because she'...more I'd give this book 3 1/2 stars. OK, let's see, comparing with my other Sarah Dessen book reviews, this book is about (fill-in-the-blank):

* A girl whose rather atypical name is: (Auden)
* working through her insecurities because she's highly intelligent, introverted, awkward, and uncertain that she can change because: (she had an atypical, grown-up-too-soon childhood and her parents divorced)
* and has a difficult relationship with her overbearing, overachieving mother who is a: (prominent literature professor)
* and a relationship with her father who is absent because: (he's a self-absorbed, insensitive workaholic writer)
* with an older sibling who is a contrastive foil because: (he's a carefree peripatetic)
* who meets a boy who is brooding, dark, and mysterious because: (his best friend was killed in a car accident where he was driving)
* and a number of girls named: (Maggie, Esther, and Leah) are initially wary of her but then become her best friends and help her out of her shell
* and the pink-obsessed friend(s) are: (Maggie and Heidi)
* and she learns that people aren't always who you think they are and that maybe you really can change and grow because: (her brother settles down, and Heidi was a bitch but is nice now, and Maggie seems shallow at first but is a brilliant student too)

There are numerous details about fashionable clothes, but I don't recall any detailed discussions of flowers (a recurring theme in many of her other books), unless I was going too fast and missed it.

Plot-wise, this felt a bit like a Magnetic Poetry re-arrangement of themes from some of her earlier novels; this time it's the boy dealing with the death of someone close, and the girl drowning out her parents' divorce, and this time with insomnia rather than, say, music. The gaggle of best friends are from a clothing store, rather than a cafe, and they do their group dancing in the store, rather than in their house.
Compared with some of the other Sarah Dessen parents, I found her father and (particularly) her mother rather exaggerated in their excesses; her mother seemed almost to be a caricature of a pretentious, judgmental snob, and I found it a bit hard to swallow that her father would ignore his baby's crying and his new wife's needs so callously. Also, the initial hook-up with Jake was, I suppose, necessary to setting up the awkward dynamic with the other girls, but in retrospect, it seemed rather out of character for Auden.

The Starburst-colored office and the details of the store were amusing, and the dynamic and tightly-timed comedy of the friends' interactions was fun to read. The main romance line had its quirky charms (e.g., a strange place to find great pie and coffee, the trips to the Park Mart, and the whole idea of "store-goers"). Overall, though, I still found it a bit less compelling in its treatment of its themes than The Truth About Forever or Just Listen. Perhaps I'm suffering from a bit of sensory fatigue, the way the tenth cheese-and-crackers doesn't taste quite as good as the first one.(less) "