Book Review | The Moon and More | Sarah Dessen

I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen
Published by Viking Juvenile on June 4, 2013
Genres: Contemporary YA, Young Adult
Pages: 435
Format: eARC
Also by this author: Saint Anything
Source: the publisher via NetGalley
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four-half-stars

Luke is the perfect boyfriend: handsome, kind, fun. He and Emaline have been together all through high school in Colby, the beach town where they both grew up. But now, in the summer before college, Emaline wonders if perfect is good enough.

Enter Theo, a super-ambitious outsider, a New Yorker assisting on a documentary film about a reclusive local artist. Theo’s sophisticated, exciting, and, best of all, he thinks Emaline is much too smart for Colby.

Emaline’s mostly-absentee father, too, thinks Emaline should have a bigger life, and he’s convinced that an Ivy League education is the only route to realizing her potential. Emaline is attracted to the bright future that Theo and her father promise. But she also clings to the deep roots of her loving mother, stepfather, and sisters. Can she ignore the pull of the happily familiar world of Colby?

Emaline wants the moon and more, but how can she balance where she comes from with where she’s going?

Sarah Dessen’s devoted fans will welcome this story of romance, yearning, and, finally, empowerment. It could only happen in the summer

So, friends, I’m slowly but surely making my way thought Sarah Dessen’s catalog, and I’m finding that my love of her books grows with each one I read. THE MOON AND MORE has made me an even bigger fan of hers because it features more of the things about her books that I’ve liked from the start: issues, emotions, romance, and the beach. (Well, not ALL of her books have that last one, but it always helps. She knows how to do a beach town.) Nothing is ever simple or uncomplicated for Sarah Dessen’s characters, and Emaline doesn’t have it any easier than the rest.

In a nutshell: Emaline lives in the small beach town of Colby, North Carolina, with her mom, stepdad, and stepsisters. The ladies, along with Grandma, run Colby Realty, a company that rents out homes to summer guests. Emaline is tight with her mom and stepdad, but doesn’t really have a relationship with her birth father, an out-of-towner her mother had a relationship with one summer when they were teens, and her mom is getting worried/nervous about sending Emaline out into the world for college in the fall. Emaline herself has plans to spend the summer with her highschool bf, Luke, and then go off to school locally. Those plans get all kinds of thrown out the window when Emaline’s birth father comes back into the picture, and when Colby Realty rents out it’s biggest house to a hot-shot documentary director from New York and her cute, hipster assistant. Aforementioned issues and emotions ensue.

One of the things I always enjoy about Sarah Dessen’s books, and so I enjoyed it in THE MOON AND MORE, is the way she balances the romance and the other stuff. Because there’s always other stuff, and it’s just as important to the story and to the characters as the relationships are. Emaline has lots on her plate that has nothing to do with the two guys, her hometown bf, Luke, and the city hipster, Theo. She lives in a blended family that she loves (even though her mother and stepsisters sometimes annoy her), but their financial resources for school are limited. Her birth father restarted some correspondence just in time to urge Emaline to apply to good schools (she’s got the brains and grades), with the promise that he would pay for it (he’s loaded). But there’s drama that results in, one, him not being able to pay for her tuition anymore, and two, him and his son coming to Colby for a visit. To say that this all complicates things for Emaline and her mother is an understatement, but I liked that this part of THE MOON AND MORE was in the spotlight just as much as Emaline and her two guys problem.

Before I get to the two guys problem, though, I just want to talk about Emaline. She makes THE MOON AND MORE better in so many ways, and it’s pretty great as it is. She’s smart and confident, capable and real. She wants to go and do and see more and experience something bigger than Colby. But when life throws her some crap–like not being able to afford going to Columbia once her birth father pulls the purse strings shut (I think it’s Columbia)–she’s bummed, but she sucks it up. Her birth father is a douche sometimes and she doesn’t take his crap. At the same time, I can totally understand that part of her that wants to know him better, and that hopes he’ll be better than he is. I liked how their relationship played out, and the way it ended up. Her birth dad is no winner, and he is selfish sometimes, but every now and then you can tell that he’s trying in his own way. I’m glad that Sarah Dessen didn’t make him a hero, but didn’t make him totally absent either.

Now. This two boys problem I was talking about. So Emaline and Luke have been together forever. Their relationship is mostly great. I really liked them together, even though Emaline seemed to be settling a little bit in terms of going to school locally and being more ok with it because Luke would be there. Until, that is, Theo shows up with his nasty boss to do a documentary on this famous, reclusive local artist. Theo is worldly and artistic and TOTALLY listens to NPR. Luke is on the football team and is a pool boy in the summer and TOTALLY wears mandals. In other words, total opposites. I feel like we’re not supposed to prefer one guy over the other, as they both have good qualities and bad. As Emaline gets closer to Theo under the auspices of helping him with the documentary, Luke does a craptastic thing and their relationship goes downhill.

At this point in THE MOON AND MORE, Emaline and Luke are both doing sketchy things. She’s hanging with Theo a lot and starting to have feelings, and Luke kind of retaliates out of confusion and hurt feelings (no excuse, just stating the facts). I guess I have a higher tolerance for cheating than other women do because even though he does a jerky thing, you can tell that Luke wasn’t a jerk. It was like he and Emaline just needed some space for a while, and their relationship was pretty open-ended, which I was cool with. I preferred him to Theo.

Theo, on the other hand…he was passionate and intelligent and exposed Emaline to things she could never have experienced in Colby. He made things special and larger than life, so it’s easy to understand Emaline’s attraction to him. But he was also a hipster snob who couldn’t understand why Emaline didn’t see the backwardness of living in such a small town. After a while, even his efforts to make their dates into EVENTS got old. Where’s the part where you aren’t doing anything special but are just happy to be together? Theo and Emaline didn’t have that. I did NOT like him AT ALL, really, by the time the end of THE MOON AND MORE came around.

But one of the reasons I’m such a big fan of THE MOON AND MORE by Sarah Dessen is because all of those boy problems are not as important as Emaline figuring out what she wants to do with herself and where she wants to go. The story is so much about her and her family and her future. For every new book of Sarah Dessen’s I read, the more I look forward to reading another. THE MOON AND MORE is a really solid contemporary, friends.