Someone Like You: a brief review

I've really enjoyed getting back into the habit of reading again, and after I finished Boy 21 a handful of days ago I realized that I had been neglecting my 94 book challenge quite a bit. So I grabbed one off the shelves that would work for the challenge but also give me a pretty easy and quick read. Guys, I'm gonna be honest with you: some of the books on the 94 book challenge just aren't really all that great. I've picked them up from the Green Valley Book Fair and impulse sale purchases that seemed like fun reads, and now in hindsight I'm kind of annoyed that they're on my shelves. Not because I'm above fun beach reads, but because I just have SO. MANY. books that I want to read that are better quality, better writing, and have better messages than some of these. So even though they're convenient because I can zoom through them in a relatively shorter time, they're just not that exciting for me. I'm obviously saying all of this because the Sarah Dessen books on my shelves fit into this category for me...but all of that being said, this one was a slight grade above the only other one of Dessen's books I've read, That Summer.

Halley and Scarlett have been best friends since middle school when Scarlett moved in across the street. They both experience the hardest time of their lives when Scarlett's summer boyfriend dies in a motorcycle accident right before junior year starts. Things become much more complicated, though, when Scarlett finds out she's pregnant. The girls form a deeper bond while working together through morning sickness, heartburn, and food cravings...but Halley is also discovering a whole new and different life with a boy from P.E. class, Macon. Macon is mysterious and dangerous and has a trail of rumors following him. Halley has never rebelled against her parents or her own personal morals, but she finds herself very easily swayed by Macon's charms.

I mentioned that this book was slightly better quality than my only other Dessen experience; that's really just because of the plot. The writing is simplistic and fairly obvious, but at least some of the content of this one gets deeper. Both Scarlett's pregnancy and Halley's relationship with Macon provide a wealth of lessons learned and great conversations for teenage readers. There's still a fair amount of details that aren't quite completely realistic (at least not for your typical teen) but for the most part, Dessen manages to stay within the realm of easy to relate to: far too many girls really do get pregnant in high school after a relatively short relationship, and far too many girls really do fall for the whims and charms of a dangerous "bad boy" who leads them down all kinds of tempting paths. I would say that many high school girls (especially girls who don't love reading more dense and complicated books) would really enjoy this book and would even get some good morals out of it. For me personally, though, it was a moderately okay read.