Just Listen - Sarah Dessen
Teen angst, beautifully done. For teens only.
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- Author:Sarah Dessen
- # of pages: 371
- Publisher:Penguin Putnam Inc.
- Original Publication Date: 05/07/2006
- Genre: Fiction - Contemporary Fiction
- Hardcover: $17.99
- Publisher's Recommended Reading Level: 12 up
- Read Aloud: 14
- Read Alone: 14
Parents need to know
Families can talk about why Annabel seems unable to talk about what has happened to her. Why does she find it so difficult to be honest about her feelings? How have her own actions caused her to be in the miserable situation in which she finds herself? Also worth discussing are Owen's ideas about music and Whitney's eating disorder.
Message
Social Behavior:
Consumerism:
Clothing, mp3 player, car, soft drink brands mentioned.
Drugs/Alcohol/Tobacco:
Teens drink and smoke, some drunkenness.
Violence
A few punches and an attempted rape. A mention of castration.
Sex
Some kissing and making out, references to teens who have had sex.
Language
Four-letter words and sexual slurs.
Common Sense says
What's the story?
Reviewed by Kate Pavao
Her mother has been fragile and depressed since the death of her own mother. Her sisters are fighting all the time, and one of them is hostile and dangerously anorexic. Annabel wants to quit modeling, but is afraid to tell her mother. And she has lost all of her friends because of something that happened at the beginning of the summer that she is unable to talk about, and that her classmates and former friends have drastically misunderstood.
The only person who will talk to her is Owen, a loner with a juvenile record, anger management issues, and strange taste in music. But there's one thing he knows all about -- how to be honest.
Is it any good?
Until near the end, this is a almost plotless book, and it covers pretty familiar territory. Most of it is about Annabel's misery at school and home, her inability to deal forthrightly with any of her problems, and her developing relationship with troubled outcast Owen.
Though the author doesn't reveal the pivotal event until near the end, most readers will have figured it out almost from the beginning. So how, then, can this novel be so completely engrossing, so difficult to put down, and ultimately so moving, not only to the teen girls who are its target audience, but to anyone?
Part of the secret lies in the author's exquisite attention to detail. Each moment is rendered so clearly and vividly that readers can easily enter Annabel's world. The characterizations are equally vivid, especially menacing Owen who, with his bizarre musical tastes and theories and his unusual life outside school, is a real original. In all of the main and secondary characters there's an intriguing emotional complexity that is usually missing in teen problem novels. It may seem odd to say it about a book in which, for large stretches, so little actually happens, but this is a real page-turner.
Other choices
Other Books by Sarah Dessen
Someone Like You
That Summer
Keeping the Moon
The Truth About Forever
Dreamland
This Lullaby
Books with Similar Themes
Weeping Willow by Ruth White
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
The Facts Speak for Themselves by Brock Cole
Related Web sites
Author's Site
Author's Blog
Parents and kids say
All Reviews
There are 33 reviews.
Adult Reviews
There are 8 reviews.
Kids Reviews
There are 25 reviews.

