Along For The Ride – Sarah Dessen review

What’s it about?
Auden is the kind of girl who keeps herself to herself and studies hard for school. With no friends, or social life, two parents who are constantly vying for the bright lights of academic recognition and a brother who is off travelling the world, changing girlfriends every five minutes and constantly sponging off his parents, she easily disappears into the background.

That is until one summer when she decides to go visit her dad, his new wife and baby down by the sea. She expects a quiet break where she can plough ahead with her first year university texts and get a head start on the curriculum but instead finds herself making more waves than she ever imagined she could.

First she finds herself in the middle of her dad and Heidi’s rocky relationship, then she makes out with a local guy called Jake, whose girlfriend she ends up working with over the summer. Then she catches the eye of the local golden boy, Eli, who has isolated himself and given up biking, ever since his best friend died in a car accident.

As the summer draws on Auden learns how to make friends, keep friends and most of all learn that it is never too late to try again.

Review
I have to say that I really enjoyed this book. It is authentic, realistic and well-written. As a child of divorced parents, and now as a single parent who has lived through the experience again but on the other side of the fence, I felt that the relationships between Auden, her parents and her stepmother Heidi really rang true.

Auden throughout the novel slowly blossoms into a young woman, and although this sounds like the most corn-ball cheesy thing I think that Sarah Dressen has done it in such a subtle manner that it seems entirely natural to the character. Change isn’t always about a dramatic make-over and sudden life-style change (a la ‘She’s The One’ teen flick) but in this case is about looking at the world outside of yourself and finding a way to relate to it. It is about trying not to be a snob and see past your initial reaction to someone and finding out what lays beneath. It is about taking a risk and a chance on life and love. At the beginning of the book Auden talks about how she is waiting for her life to begin, i.e. at the start of university but what she has forgotten is that life if happening all around her at every moment, and the more she closes herself off from it, and retreats into her little world of books and academia, the more she is missing out on.

Should you read it? Definitely. Does it make an impression and make you think? Yes, it certainly reminded me that I need to get round to learning how to ride a bike :-D

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