I'm waiting....

Dear Joshua,

This next review is for a book that I would never recommend for you in a million years. But alas, my assignment is to review all the books we read and since the majority of the class consists of women, I'm bound to have to read something that doesn't pertain to you.

Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen is a typical teen problem novel in first person narration. The narrator is our main character, Ruby. Ruby has lived with a drunken mother and absent father. Her sister left home ASAP and made a way for herself in the world, seeming to leave Ruby behind. When Ruby’s mother abandons her one day by just not coming home (and staying away for a while), she decides to fend for herself for a few months until she turns 18 and is a legal adult. She would have barely scraped by, but was found out and handed over to Children’s Services. She is reunited with her sister, who takes her in and sends her to a fancy private school. Ruby meets a neighbor boy who attends the same school and is forced into friendship through proximity. Things get complicated and predictable and Ruby finds out that this boy shares more in common with her than she thought.

Dessen is a New York Times best-selling author, but I found the book terribly scripted and predictable. I was felt like I was waiting for more (Something! Anything!) the entire time I was reading it. Maybe the problem teen novel is not my favorite thing, but I figured this could have been done a little better. Maybe not, I don’t know. I do know that there are surely some readers out there that would really love Lock and Key but I am not one of them. Give me something to bite into and mull over.

--Paige