auden, overachieving lonely girl goes to spend the summer with her father, her stepmother, and their new daughter thisbe (father is Literary). infant half-sister is impossibly fussy, dissolving the new mother, yet having little affect on the father, because he is too selfish and self-absorbed to care or notice. girl copes by working, and not sleeping. girl meets boy. boy is haunted, and also afflicted with insomnia. yada yada yada, you can pretty much piece together the rest.

the characters were kind of annoying: too simplistic, not really believable (except maggie, one of stepmother's employees and auden's new friend. she was the most believable and my favorite by far). the story unfolds pretty well though. thankfully, the characters developed a bit more depth as well. still, was glad when it was over. ( )

I remember I had watched the movie adaptation on Netflix and enjoyed it so that held the promise that the book would be equally as good. I was not disappointed, and a great read for summer. ( )

BRO ITS FUCKING SARAH DESSEN. THIS BITCH IS MY CRACK, COCAINE, METH, AND HEROIN. I WOULD DRINK HER DOWN LIKE THE SMOOTHEST VODKA. ( )

Not quite up there among my favorites by this author but it’s still a solid read, especially if you’re looking for something set in the summer.

Auden is not the best at socializing and isn’t always nicest, so that was good, I like a heroine with flaws. Eli, Auden’s potential love interest, intrigued me early on with the brooding loner thing and distancing himself from his friends.

It’s just that once this hit the middle section neither Auden nor Eli held up as quite as interesting to me as they’d been at the beginning, they both kind of lost that bit of an edge to their personalities that they’d had in the beginning, which, I mean, that was growth, growth should be a good thing for a character and a story but maybe that growth came a little too soon or something? I don’t know, just pacing wise, somewhere along the way this lost some momentum, there was a chunk of this book where it didn’t feel like there was much going on, where it could have used a bit more plot, maybe some goals for these two to work towards or something. The joys of late night shopping and pie and the mini-mart, that stuff was cute, even relatable and memorable just not necessarily as page-turning as I would have liked.

But there were other things that staved off any actual boredom. I really enjoyed the friend group, they were a good mix of quirk and heart. I particularly liked Maggie, with her combination of book smarts, fashion sense, trick riding, a disapproving mom, and a guy cutely crushing on her, there were moments where I wondered if I may have preferred her as the lead character, it seemed like she had more potential story in her than Auden did.

Also, I don’t know how much the stepmom’s struggles with her awful husband and her newborn will appeal to this book’s intended teen audience but as an adult reader I was impressed by the messy realism there to the point where it got me hoping that Sarah Dessen may someday try her hand at an adult novel.

Lastly, I wanted to note that if you have the opportunity to read Dessen’s novels in chronological order, Along For The Ride continues her fun habit of inserting cameos/Easter eggs from her previous books, most of them are extremely brief like if you’re reading too fast you might even miss it, but when you do spot a certain character riding by on her bicycle or a key necklace makes an appearance, etc., they’re just lovely little bonuses to the reading experience. ( )

Green eyes strike again! Seriously...

Apparently I'm wild enough to not require a full translation of 'all that bike shit' into English. How cool is that?

I did it again. 1 book in 1 day. Wow.

I find myself inspired to give the bike thing another shot. Among other things.

Sigh.
Wonderful. Inspiring. Warm. Achingly hopeful.
Simply wow ( )