Sunday, February 1, 2015

The Complex World of Sarah Dessen

When I started re-reading Sarah Dessen's books, I only remembered Colby, I completely forgot about the other town where I'd say roughly half of her books take place. It's a town that is supposed to be about 4 hours away from Colby, and the characters will still interact with each other, but it doesn't happen very often. I just finished Just Listen. I feel like I'm reading the books in the wrong order. I have been reading them in the order they are on in my bookshelf, but that means the newer ones tend to be closer to the front of the line. Don't get me wrong, there is technically no right or wrong order to read the books in, but when I was reading What Happened to Goodbye, it mentions a guy and a girl talking about music, and those people are the main characters in Just Listen. I'm starting to feel like if you want all the details about everybody in one of the books, you need to start with the first book she wrote, and work your way toward the new ones. It's fine if you don't, but you may miss out on some of the connections that are ever present.

Sometimes when I read books like Sarah Dessen's, I wonder how she keeps it all straight in her head. There are so many different characters and events that all kind of intertwine. I would have to have a giant white board or something. I've decided that the next time I read her books, I'm going to try to keep track off all the different characters, and where they appear. It will probably be a while before I do that, because I'm still working on reading all of my books. Maybe I'll do it when the new book comes out. The countdown is on.

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