(Probably four stars.) But I didn't love it. I really, really did, definitely more so than not. And yet, there was something else about this book, and I can't quite put my finger on it. Spinnerbait, Anger Management, a certain character who makes coffee.), and just the writing you read and you know it's a Sarah Dessen book.

And there was definitely a lot of elements here that scream Dessen: family issues, hints of romance, friendship, cameos and known references (i.e.

That was a new thing, I think, that I've seen from Dessen (though I haven't read most of her books for years). But Saint Anything had this aspect-this sort of thrilling, tense, suspenseful aspect created by one single character, and that aspect kept the pages turning as you tried to figure out what this character wanted, what the hell they would do, and how far Dessen might go. I've seen some reviews and blurbs calling it one of her darker novels, and while it has some darkness (which I'll go into later), I wouldn't call it dark, especially when her other books have dealt with dark subjects like drugs, rape, and domestic abuse and violence. Saint Anything felt like a Sarah Dessen novel, yet it didn't. It's there that she meets new friends and gets to escape from home, where her dad's always working, her mother acts like nothing bad happened and Peyton is essentially innocent, and Sydney tries to stay a million feet away from Peyton's creepy friend Ames. While Sydney avoids his phone calls-they have nothing to say to each other, and he won't let her come visit-she tries to accumulate to her new public school, where she transferred to from her swanky private one after her brother's accident and sentence. Despite the fact that her brother Peyton's been on a train just waiting to wreck, her parents-namely, her mother-seem relatively shocked that Peyton is in jail. Sydney Stanford has sort of lived in the shadow of her bad boy brother, who's currently in jail after he did something horrible while driving drunk (spoiler alert: he hits a kid and puts him in a wheelchair for life). You either will or you won't, and for Saint Anything, well. And when you have a favorite author, you have this expectation and hope when you read one of their books: that you'll love it. (Could you imagine a Sarah Dessen novel that was solely focused on romance?! I WANT ONE.) That said, Sarah Dessen is one of my favorite authors. I don't love all her books, and I prefer the ones that have more romance over the ones that don't. My love for Sarah Dessen's novels began when I was a freshman in high school and I read This Lullaby (my second favorite novel of hers, with the first being Along for the Ride), and since then I have read all of her books (except for The Moon and More, which I have yet to finish). I was eager to read Saint Anything since I first heard about it solely for the fact that it's a new Sarah Dessen novel.

Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen