The Truth About Forever
Title: The Truth About Forever
Author: Sarah Dessen
Genre: Young Adult Romance
Pages: 400 (Trade Paperback)
I've been looking at this book for a while now. For one thing, I love the cover. For another, the back cover blurb sounded interesting. However, I didn't pick it up until a few weeks ago.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that this isn't a light, fluffy Y.A. romance. Rather, it's the story about a young woman who's trying to figure herself out and who's so used to telling everyone she's "fine" that she's begun to believe it, too. Macy isn't fine, though. Her father died at a young age of a heart attack a year and a half before, her relationship with her mother is strained at best and her boyfriend Jason is, well, he kind of reminds me of a robot in that he's so focused and has the answers and lists for everything and disregards sticky emotions.
Macy's beginning the summer taking over Jason's job at the library's front desk while he's away at Brain Camp. She's the outcast, unwanted there by the "perfect" girls who worked at the library long before she and Jason started dating. They make her life at the library a stilted, uncomfortable sort of hell. Her free time is spent studying for the SATs. When she emails Jason and tells him she misses him and that she loves him, he responds by saying he thinks they need a break and that he's afraid she isn't taking her job at the library's front desk seriously enough.
Not quite knowing what to do, Macy's driving around town and sees the Wish catering van up ahead. Delia and the Wish crew had previously catered an event at her mom's house, and Delia had told Macy that if Macy found herself wanting or needing a job with them she would be more than happy to hire her. So Macy follows the van, ends up at a party and is hired on the spot by Delia, who's very pregnant and in desperate need of help.
As the summer continues, Macy begins to realize that since her dad died she's kind of locked herself up emotionally. She doesn't allow herself to feel much, strives to be "perfect" because she thinks that's what everyone expects of her (which her mom does, really, to an extent), and has never allowed herself to grieve her dad's untimely death.
There's also Wes, though. Understanding, artistic, and hot Wes. Wes who looks at Macy and actually sees her, who likes her and her imperfections. Wes, who's recently lost his mom. Wes, who is also on a break.
Their friendship develops over the course of the summer, beginning really with a game called Truth (basically, you have to tell the truth and if you pass on a question and the other person answers your question you lose). Truth is something that's woven throughout the novel--Macy and Wes play it whenever they can, make new rules, discard old ones, etc. Everyone else thinks they're weird, but it's their way of getting to know one another and of sharing things about themselves. Neither of them asks easy questions, either.
Macy's mom sees the changes in her daughter, though, gets scared and tells Macy she has to quit her job with Wish and not see any of her friends from the catering crew again. Macy's of course devastated--she'd just started to come back to life! Of course things change, mainly due to a freak thunderstorm that screws up an outdoor gala her mom had been planning. The caterer quits. Her mom's at wits end and asks Macy to call Delia and see if Wish can cater the party. Of course, Wish does, even though Delia's recently had the baby and hasn't catered an event since. Jason shows back up, tells Macy he wants to get back together. Thanks to a gift from Wes, Macy realizes there's no way she can go back to being the person she was. So she runs after Wes (literally--and that's an important thing, y'all) and amends the rules to Truth.
This was such a touching book. I continue to be amazed by the fact that I can relate to YA heroines so well, but this one was another winner. Macy is so real, and so vulnerable. Wes is so amazing (imperfect, but amazing nonetheless). The secondary characters were all well-drawn and fully fleshed-out. It wasn't as fast a read as some of the other YA's I've read, but that's okay, nothing wrong with a somewhat slower read. Everything about this book just worked, and odds are I'll buy another novel by Dessen (actually, Just Listen looks pretty good).
I give it:
