The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

Title: The Truth About Forever
Author: Sarah Dessen
Publisher: Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers group
Publication Date: 2004
Number of Pages: 374


Macy's summer stretches before her, carefully planned and outlined. She will spend her days sitting at the library information desk. She will spend her evenings studying for the SATs. Spare time will be used to help her obsessive mother prepare for the big opening of the townhouse section of her luxury development.

But Macy's plans don't anticipate a surprising and chaotic job with Wish Catering, a motley crew of new friends, or . . . Wes. Tattooed, artistic, anything-but-expected Wes. He doesn't fit Macy's life at all so why does she feel so comfortable with him? So . . . happy? What is it about him that makes her let down her guard and finally talk about how much she misses her father, who died before her eyes the year before?

Sarah Dessen delivers a page-turning novel that carries readers on a roller coaster of denial, grief, comfort, and love as we watch a broken but resilient girl pick up the pieces of her life and fit them back together.

The second I finished this book I smacked my forehead. Why? Because I hadn't read this book earlier! If you haven't read this novel yet, GO GET IT!

If someone ever asks me if a book has ever changed my life then I will tell them, not missing a beat, "The Truth About Forever" by Sarah Dessen. This book is not only entertaining, it really makes you see life in a different perspective and ask yourself if this is the way you want to spend your life.

I have both laughed and cried while reading this book, both releasing some sort of water (I have a bad habit of spitting while laughing) which has been terrible for my book. I have read the last paragraph of this novel so many times that I have lost count. Here it is now (don't worry, no spoilers!):

"That was the thing. You just never knew. Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was really all about. It was twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wished would just last and last. But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered and that was this: it was happening. Right then, as I ran into the bright sunlight, and every moment afterwards. Look, there. Now. Now. Now."

This book has A+ written all over it!