Just Listen by Sarah Dessen...

Series: -
Published: February 28th 2008 by Puffin Books
Pages: 371
Rating: 5 stars
Age Recommendation:

Synopsis:

Last year, Annabel was "the girl who has everything"—at least that's the part she played in the television commercial for Kopf's Department Store.This year, she's the girl who has nothing: no best friend because mean-but-exciting Sophie dropped her, no peace at home since her older sister became anorexic, and no one to sit with at lunch. Until she meets Owen Armstrong. Tall, dark, and music-obsessed, Owen is a reformed bad boy with a commitment to
truth-telling. With Owen's help,maybe Annabel can face what happened
the night she and Sophie stopped being friends.

Review:

I went into this book expecting not to like it and having to put it down (which seems like what I have been doing with all the books that I have been reading lately) But I was plesantly suprised with this one and found myself finishing it within a day I couldn't put it down.

The plot. I thought that the plot of this book was a little slow to start which I have found with the other three Sarah Dessen books that I have read and just like with all the other books once I get about a thrid of the way through, the story really started to pick up and I couldn't put the book down until I was finished. I loved everything about this book, I loved the flashbacks to some of the events that happened in Annabel's past and how those events really effected her, how we got to see the relationship between Annabel and Owen grow throughout the book and also how that this book tackled more than one issue within the story.

The characters. I thought that all the charcters were written really well in this book including all of the side characters, I thought that they were all written to be very relateable and also in such detail that I could really have a clear picture of what they looked like and how they acted in my head when I was reading the book. There were four really stand out characters to me, ofcourse there was Anabel and Owen. I thought that their charcters were written so well and I found myself being really fascinated by Owen's character, and how he was so obsessed with music and i loved how his character was the complete oppisite to what the world saw him as. Thought I thought to start with Annabel's character seemed like a pretty normal person, I loved how over the course of the book I got to see Annabel's character grow into this strong minded indepedant person which I loved. The other two characters which I found myself really likeing towards the end of the book were Clarke and Rolly. I found that Rolly's charcter always made me smile and Clarke seemed like a really loyal person and someone who would be a really great friend to have.

Overall I thought that this book was great and it was the book that finally got me out of my book rut which was a complete bonus. This a book that I will defineitly be reading next summer and I can't wait to start reading more of Sarah Dessen's books.