Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen
by Sam Arnold-Boyd on Oct.07, 2013, under Real life, Romance, Teen Top 10, Uncategorized
Review by Carson W.
Who would like this book? This book’s main audience is more focused toward girls about middle school age, even though it is written at about freshman level, and is about a teen that is graduating high school.
The goods on this book: Auden is a girl who has always been challenged when it comes to making friends. When she stays the summer at a house in Colbie with her stepmom, Heidi, dad, and their newborn baby, Thisbe, things start to get a little hectic. With Heidi stressing about the baby, college applications, making friends, dealing with a mean (and overly controlling mom), working, and studying textbooks for next year’s courses, Auden finds herself stuck in a town obsessed over biking. She is soon pulled into a group of friends and realizes that there is more to life than striving in classes. This mainly becomes apparent to her when she meets a boy who is struggling to find the brighter side of things after his best friend, Abe, is killed by a drunk driver. This strange boy is named Eli. He lights up Auden’s life in a way that school work can’t. Eli helps her to experience things she never had a chance to, because of her mom, and also her parent’s divorce. He calls this her quest. And with his help, Auden slowly learns to “get back on the bike” when things aren’t working out. I liked this book because of the way all of the characters change over time, and not always for the better. As Auden progresses in this journey she discovers some stuff from her parent’s divorce that had been buried for a long time. I also like how this book gives more than one perspective throughout the story, even though it is written at first to be Auden’s.
The details: 399 pages; 2009 Review by Carson W.
