“Life can be long or short, it all depends on how you choose to live it. it’s like forever, always changing. for any of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. you can never know for sure, so you’d better make every second count. what you have to decide is how you want your life to be. if your forever was ending tomorrow, is this how you’d want to have spent it?”

Losing someone you love is hard enough without being there to watch them disappear before your eyes. Hard or not, this is exactly what happens to Macy Queen when her father dies of a heart attack as she watches helplessly. Macy’s older sister grieves by bawling her eyes out for days. Macy’s mother avoids her pain by working nearly twenty-four hours a day. Macy copes by falling for the guy who has all the answers, who has somehow managed to become perfect. For over a year she copies her boyfriend Jason’s every move and goal becoming a straight A student, active in extracurricular activities, and a model daughter, but then Jason leaves for the summer to go to Brain Camp. Suddenly, Macy is left to her own devices and filling in for Jason at the library where the other employees (both female versions of Jason) seem to go out of their way to make her miserable. Everything seems to be going as well as can be expected until an email from Jason blows her world to pieces: I think it’s best for us to take a break from our relationship, and each other, until I return at the end of the summer. It will give us both time to think, so that in August we’ll know better whether we want the same things or if it’s best to sever our ties and make this separation permanent. After reading this email a spur of the moment decision and a twist of fate find Macy signing on to join the Wish catering crew, an unlikely group that just happens to include the sawoon-worthy Wes. Macy eventually discovers that Wes is also on a break from his girlfriend and the two develop a strong friendship, bonding over their non-relationship statuses and a seemingly never-ending game of Truth (the only rule, you have to tell the truth). When the end of summer starts looming closer every day, questions start to race around Macy’s head. Should she get back together with Jason? What will happen to her friendship with Wes? Why does it feel like she’s finally alive for the first time in years?

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen is brilliant. I’ve only ever read one of her other books before (Lock and Key, also highly recommended), but I loved that one too. Sarah has a way of dealing with powerful emotions issues and family crises without making them depressing or overly melodramatic. Her characters are real and relatable and her writing is beautiful. Honestly, authors like Sarah make me wish I was still a “young adult” so that I could have discovered her at a younger age. Her stories make you think about a variety of topics but always seem to leave you with a sense of hope. I loved the subplots in this book, especially; they came together so beautifully by the end. This book will make you take a long look at death, grief, family, love, friendship, truth, flaws, luck, life, choice, infomercials, junkyard art, prison records, and how sometimes finding perfection means accepting that you’ll never have perfection.

Erica’s Rating: 5 stars

“I, Cassia Bernard, do solemnly swear to find pure red—my passion—this summer. Dad’s passion is art. When he’s painting, no one can reach him, not even me. My mom’s passion was the ocean. She said the ocean allows you to see whatever you want to see. That was one of the last things she ever said to me…”

“When I found out that ‘Indigo Blues’ hit number one on the Billboard charts this morning, I ran to the bathroom and threw up. Then the toilet lid smacked down on my nose. Now, at the insistence of my mom, I’m zoning with an ice pack on my face.”

Think about the worst rumor anyone has ever spread about you and then imagine that someone turned that rumor into a song and it became a hit single overnight. This is the stuff nightmares are made of. This is Indigo’s life.

Told from alternating points of view, Indigo Blues shows what happens to both the songwriter and the muse after a breakup inspires a hit single. Adam Spade’s band Blank Stare is the newest craze and all Adam can think about is Indigo. She won’t return his calls or texts, but she never leaves his thoughts. For Indigo, this seems like the peak in her sudden rise to infamy and even though Adam has ruined her life he still won’t stop calling her.

It’s hard to give a better description because, honestly, not much happens. The story centers around Indigo and Adam’s relationship as Adam struggles with newfound fame and attempts to write a song that will live up to the standards ‘Indigo Blues’ has set and Indigo tries and fails to stay out of the limelight. Indigo finally gives in to one of the numerous requests for an interview and agrees to go on TV with Adam to put to rest all of the rumors surrounding the song.

To be honest, I found Indigo annoying. She whines and complains but doesn’t actually do much. And plus, the thing she’s complaining about is something most girls are searching for everyday: a guy who is completely in love with them. She broke up with Adam after they’d been dating a few months not because he was mean, a cheat, or a liar but because he was too devoted. Really? Give me a guy like that any day. I liked Adam better, but could see in his tendency to clinginess an insecurity that would ruin all of his relationships. Still, I thought he grew as a character more than Indigo through the book. I probably could have dealt with all this if there had been more of a conclusion to the story. Did Adam and Indigo find closure or a way back to each other? You could argue it either way.

The prose itself read well and there were some very pretty phrasing, but overall, I liked Shrinking Violet a lot more.

Erica’s Rating: 2.5/5 stars

“Might as well admit it—I’m shy. Not the kind where you blush when someone compliments you, but the kind that results in feelings of nausea when meeting new people. When I was little, I thought I was Shy Adams. People would ask my name, and my mother would immediately answer for me, “She’s shy.” She even did it three weeks ago when we met up with some of the radio people at a restaurant.”

Feeling uncomfortable in front of strangers is a feeling I know well, but not even I am paralyzed at the thought of speaking out loud. Teresa (who most people call Tere) Adams’ is. She has one friend but might as well be invisible to the rest of the school. But her silence hides a voice stronger than anyone would suspect and a dream of one day becoming a radio DJ and sharing her love of music with the world. Or at least South Florida. It’s a dream that suddenly looks closer to reality than ever before when one of the DJs at her step-father’s radio station quits. After a fight with her extremely confident, appearance-obsessed mother, Tere surprises even herself by voicing this dream aloud and asking Rob for a chance to host the now vacant show. She starts out helping at the station, interning and observing the afternoon DJ, but eventually she gets a lucky break and is allowed to co-host the evening show. On air, Tere becomes Sweet T, the confident girl with the sexy voice who couldn’t possibly be shy, silent Tere Adams and she makes sure it stays this way by swearing everyone at the station to silence on her identity. Which is why everything at school continues mostly as normal. The one exception is Gavin, Tere’s new crush who just happens to be one of her partners on a project that combines two of her worst nightmares: working in a group and a presentation in front of the class. A long presentation. Gavin is astonishingly understanding, heartbreakingly cute, and a music buff so falling for him is not a shock, but how easy Tere finds it to talk to him is. Entire sentences are uttered in his presence, even after Tere finds out that Gavin listens to her radio show. It’s only when the afternoon DJ comes up with the brilliant idea of auctioning off Sweet T as a prom date to the winner of a songwriting contest that things begin to unravel. Can Tere survive the revelation of her identity? Will she be paralyzed on stage in front of her entire school when she meets the contest winner in person? What if the guy hates her? What if he doesn’t? Should she tell Gavin the truth?

Shrinking Violet was adorable in so many ways. I rooted for Tere every step of the way and the way she talked about the bands she loved made me wish they actually existed so I could look them up. You don’t have to know anything about music to appreciate this story, though. Tere’s struggle to overcome her own shortcomings can translate into anyone’s life. The rest of the characters too—love ‘em or hate ‘em—are unique and well written. Her mother, for example, makes me extraordinarily grateful that my mother is nothing like Tere’s. Their relationship if fraught with difficulties and arguments, mostly from the fact that they exist on completely separate wavelengths. Like Tere herself, though, their relationship grows and changes from beginning to end.

Well written, engaging, and littered with random bursts of incredibly poetic prose, I really enjoyed Shrinking Violet and highly recommend it.

Erica’s Rating: 5/5 stars

“When someone you love dies, people ask you how you’re doing, but they don’t really want to know. They seek affirmation that you’re okay, that you appreciate their concern, that life goes on and so can they. Secretly they wonder when the statute of limitations on asking expires (its three months, by the way. Written or unwritten, that’s about all the time it takes for people to forget the one thing that you never will).”