Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

I was trying desperately to find a book to read. I am really tired of trying to plow through The Odyssey, and trying to enlighten my mind by reading classics like Madame Bovary, The Scarlett Pimpernell and Anna Karenina just to name a few of my latest attempts. I actually don't mind The Scarlett Pimpernell. I think I would like Anna Karenina, but it involves too much thinking. And don't even get me started on The Odyssey. For some reason, my Honors kids are really psyched about the idea of reading that. So I am trying. Oh...but kill me now! (I am SO NOT a world lit girl. Give me the good old ex-patriots of the Modern American movement every time!) So I wanted to read something that was for pure entertainment, but wasn't about crazy vampires and wolf-people (because Edward insists they aren't really werewolves), or about crazy 50 year old wizards who are trying to kill boys with weird scars. And I didn't want to read about sex. I tried to read a few YA lit last summer, and well, I am about fed up with all these teenage girls having sex and drinking beer and talking about finding themselves. Don't get me wrong, I am all about finding myself, but to be completely honest, I had to find myself before I got to have sex. It can be done, people! Anyway. We were on our way to the ward campout, and I just really wanted to read something fun and didn't involve deep analysis.

I scrolled throught the e Book store as fast as I could, because I knew I didn't have time to go to the library or to the bookstore (I love that thing!). I didn't even know where to start, because for the last five years, I have been reading only what I needed to read for planning classes. I don't really have any idea of what the students are reading because for the first little bit of my career, all my students were reading Harry Potter, and then once that was over, the Twilight phenomenon hit, and those who aren't reading either of those are reading weird fantasy novels in a series, and I really can't handle all these different people from Zoltron or where ever the hell they're from. And Oprah's books fall into that category of too much thinking. And there's probably a lot of sex in those, too. So I finally found something that looked familiar. It was the cover to this book called Just Listen by Sarah Dessen. I had seen the book on one of my student's desk this past week. My student is a fairy intelligent girl, who reads voraciously, and I think I could trust her taste. She, just like me, read all the Twilight books, thought they were okay, but wasn't impressed. I think I could trust her. So I hurried and downloaded it, and we were off to the campout.

I didn't actually read at the campout, even though I had fresh battaries in my book light, but I started it the next day (Saturday) and I finished it today (Sunday). I'm not jumping up and down, but I was pleased and surprised that I liked it.

The story is, yet again, about a girl who is trying to find herself, but in a way that was different than anything I had read this summer. She wasn't sleeping around. She wasn't experimenting with drugs, and she wasn't being a brat to her family. She is just a quiet girl who was trying to deal with something tramatic that had happened to her over her summer. Her friends have abandoned her because they think she did something she didn't, and the only person who ends up understanding her is this weird, slightly scary guy, Owen. Of course the sub-plot with Owen is predictable, but everything else in her life a long the way is interesting.

The book talks about how her family (a traditional family: mom, dad, and siblings) have handled issues such as eating disorders and depression. The girl, Annabelle, is the youngest of three girls sisters. Maybe that's why I enjoyed the book. I could totally realate, being the youngest of three girls, myself. I was interesting because the oldest sister, Kirsten, was loud and dramatic (um...do I hear a Natalee?). The middle sister, Whitney, had a really hard time reckoning with her position of the family, and her decisions reflected that insecurity. She struggled with her choices, and learned from them (sounds familiar, Yarley). And then the main character, Annabelle, saw how her sister's choices affected her parents and tried to do everything she could to make life easier for them (Did I ever tell you why I didn't get in trouble in high school?). But while the similarities were eerie, there was also enough for me to remove myself and look through a different lense.

There was one scene at the end when all the sisters were together, and Whitney reads something she wrote. It was beautiful, and I started to cry because I could see me and my sisters in that scene, with Yarley talking about all that she's been through. I don't know if you can fully understand that moment unless you have sisters. As for the Owen story, predicatble? Yes. But you couldn't help but root for it. He was so good for her. He saved her from herself.

One last thing that I really liked about this book was that it didn't focus on the worldly aspects of life. It was mostly focusing on Annabelle's growth in learning how to express herself, and how to deal with the ups and downs of life one day at a time. It had a good message. There was one quote that I particulary liked: "Like Owen said, it was day by day, if not moment by moment. All you could do was take on as much weight as you can bear. And if you're lucky, there's someone close enough by to shoulder the rest."

It was nice to read a book that fell in line with my own personal beliefs. Because I do believe that you do the best you can with the resources you have, and someone else will take up the rest. But I don't think it's luck. I think it's our gift from a loving Heavenly Father. It was nice to read something that taught that, and it was nice to read something about families getting through crappy stuff together. It made me feel like there was hope for my students if they read this book. Anyway, if your tired of vampires, sex, drugs, cutting, death, and all the other happy literature there is out there, you should read this. It's not all nice. Bad things happen to good people. But the way the characters come through it is refreshing.