Summer Romance: The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

The Truth About For­ever by Sarah Dessen, copy­right May 2004, avail­able in hard­cover and trade paper­back for­mats. YA novel for grades 7 and up: kisses only.

This is yet another strong novel about teens deal­ing with real life. The Truth About For­everspeaks of grief and loss as well as liv­ing in the moment and enjoy­ing life at the moment. Macy Queen is the nar­ra­tor of this story and it is through her eyes we see how her life has changed since deal­ing with the death of a loved one and dis­cov­er­ing a new love in the course of one summer.

As the novel opens, the sum­mer has started. Macy and her fam­ily have recently had a death in the fam­ily. Macy’s father, dur­ing a rou­tine morn­ing jog, col­lapses and dies from a heart attack in front of her. It’s a mem­ory that won’t fade. Since her father’s death, Macy decides to remov­ing her­self from the world by shed­ding her old life prior to her father’s death and keep­ing only to her­self. Macy’s boyfriend, Jason, is prepar­ing to go to Brain Camp for the sum­mer. Macy thinks that Jason is just what she needs in her life. Some­one who’s in con­trol of every­thing and who doesn’t believe in chance or fate. Macy agrees to work for him dur­ing the sum­mer at the info desk at the library. A job Jason takes seri­ously and expects Macy to do the same.

Macy estab­lishes a rou­tine in her life that she allows to con­sume her: work­ing and study­ing for her SAT exam. She per­pet­u­ates a false façade of per­fec­tion to her fam­ily. It seems that she doesn’t allow her­self any time for fun or friend­ship. Her sis­ter, Car­o­line seems to have been the rebel­lious one in the fam­ily: sneak­ing out at night to meet boys. Macy is more pre­dictable where Car­o­line was wild and out of con­trol. Car­o­line even­tu­ally gets it together, grad­u­at­ing from col­lege, mar­ry­ing and set­tling down.

Macy’s mom, Deb­o­rah, decides to hide behind work. Work is her refuge from life and all it’s ugli­ness. It’s some­thing she can con­trol. Deb­o­rah started a real estate busi­ness, Wild­flower Ridge Homes, with her hus­band and was suc­cess­ful at it. After his death, she con­tin­ues to give even more of her­self to her job and less to fam­ily. Car­o­line is the one who tries the breach the family’s code of silence of deal­ing with the death of their dad by ren­o­vat­ing the beach house that he loved so much. How­ever, this only causes more heartache and grief in the fam­ily. The agenda seems to be to pre­tend that every­thing is alright on the sur­face and stick to safe top­ics and avoid the ugly truth.

And so it goes with Macy and her rou­tine of work and study until she meets Delia and gang from Wish, who caters a party for her mother that goes dis­as­trously wrong. Delia runs Wish, named after her late sis­ter who died of can­cer. Very preg­nant, Delia runs this busi­ness with her two nephews Bert and Wes and with Kristy and Mon­ica. To say that chaos is their mid­dle name is putting it mildly. Soon, Macy starts to work for them just to do some­thing dif­fer­ent and unpre­dictable. It’s a change. Some­thing dif­fer­ent. Unfor­tu­nately, Macy’s mom see her new change as a neg­a­tive and dis­cour­ages her rela­tion­ship with Delia and the rest. That’s it in terms of the plot that I care to dis­cuss or divulge. You’d have to read the book to get the rest.

There are a few story arcs that even­tu­ally cul­mi­nate to the end of sum­mer where you see new begin­nings and end­ings. Also there’s a nice romance that devel­ops that doesn’t ever seem forced or con­trived. There’s a nat­ural flow to it that I found refresh­ing. The mem­o­ries of first love. Remem­ber the late night walks? Or the two of you alone, shar­ing your most inner most secrets in the dark with the cute guy whose obliv­i­ous of his effect on young girls. Sa-woon. Nor does he care. Sa-woon, again. It’s a bit ide­al­is­tic but who cares, I loved it. The dia­logue is real­is­tic; the issues of death and grief were nicely han­dled and bal­anced with an uplift­ing mes­sage of liv­ing in the moment. The over­all tone of the story wasn’t depres­sive at all despite the topic of death plays an inte­gral part in the story. How­ever, the story does evoke a lit­tle of every­thing emo­tion­ally from you, lead­ing you to be a bit more reflec­tive of life in gen­eral. I loved the ending.

I iden­ti­fied with Macy and what she was going through. Macy was a very engag­ing nar­ra­tor. The sec­ondary char­ac­ters helped round out the story and were just as mem­o­rable as the pro­tag­o­nist but they never over­shad­owed the nar­ra­tor. I used to have an aver­sion to first per­son sto­ries but when you read a story like this you have to admit that it’s not always the the point of view that is at fault. More or less the power is in the mighty pen and the tal­ent of the author. First per­son does have it’s lim­i­ta­tions but if done right, it shouldn’t be that notice­able to the reader. Fault likes with the author not the for­mat is my the­ory for why first per­son doesn’t always work well for me. Third per­son pov is what I would pre­fer but I do have keep­ers on my book­shelf with first per­son pov.

Any­way, I loved this story. I loved Macy as the nar­ra­tor. I related to her. Loved the sec­ondary char­ac­ters that included Delia and the gang. Enjoyed the romance while it was a bit frus­trat­ing watch­ing the two of them mis­judge or mis­com­mu­ni­cate with each other slightly at times but then it’s nec­es­sary for the cli­max of the story. It cer­tainly added to the antic­i­pa­tion. I remem­ber Jane men­tion­ing that she’d read this book like five times or some­thing. I know this is one of her best books ever, so you know I had to read it. I plan to read more of Ms. Dessen’s work. I’m sure her other sto­ries prob­a­bly won’t top this one; who knows, they might but any­way, I think she has a great voice to tell sto­ries with and I strongly rec­om­mend this title for read­ers who are look­ing for a good book to read. It’s a quick read, too. I took my time with it because I didn’t want it to end. My grade, A.

I know some read­ers won’t touch books that are labeled YA nov­els and it’s a pity. A lot of the time, the themes in YA are very adult allow­ing the dif­fer­ence to be seen through the eyes of the young. My thanks to Rachel for bring­ing this genre to my atten­tion and of course to Jane for men­tion­ing how much she loved this book. Read this book. It’s very good. I can’t pro­mote this book any bet­ter than that. Any­way, good read­ing to you as always.

For Fur­ther Reading

• My TBB List or Nov­els Worth Mentioning

Tagged as: Family loss, Sarah Dessen, summer romance