Reviews - The Rest of the Story

1.68k reviews for:

The Rest of the Story

Sarah Dessen

4.01 AVERAGE

dillthebookworm's review against another edition

2.75

emotional funny mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I cannot say that this book was an entire waste of my time, but it certainly was not the right choice for a summer read.

I picked this book up years ago at a book fair, let it sit on my shelf, and then finally, in June of this year, I picked it up, ready for a reflective read, exploring trauma and how that can affect the memory. Instead, I was presented with this: a cheesy, trope-y teen novel that has no idea what genre it wants to be. It jumps around from being a romance to a drama to a who-knows-what. The town and Emma's family at the lake are made out to be "so quirky", but Emma honestly just has no personality in comparison to them. Where are her hobbies? What else does she do other than have problems, fall for boys, and have driving anxiety (which, by the way, just gets magically cured by the end of the book).

Also, this book just loves to create nonsense plot points. The toaster? Trinity is pregnant but doesn't even have the baby by the end? The Sergeant never shows up???

It's as if nothing ever ends up mattering. Emma gets to have her cake and eat it too. But, she doesn't really act spoiled, but her family just keeps ragging on her for being the "spoiled, rich cousin", with zero basis, and I suppose they explore that in the story, but not to a great extent. It's not even an Elle Woods situation, it's just dumb. Also also, Emma is a goodie-goodie who doesn't drink, but then suddenly she does, and this is never unpacked fully in relation to her mother's addiction. Sigh.

But of course, I have to remember that maybe I am no longer in the age range to enjoy such books, but this was such a struggle to read. I wasted a full two, nearly three months on this story, and it didn't even have substance. Not the worst book I've ever read, but definitely not up there, either.