There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.Īfter surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself.

Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends. Not earthshaking but pleasant and an easy read. The rich kid/poor kid developments sometimes feel stereotypical, and excepting one secondary Asian American character, everyone defaults to white. Most of the characters are reasonably well drawn, though Emma’s anxiety never feels particularly acute. There’s a mild romance, mild drama, and a large cast of teenagers having a good time. Emma finds a place in North Lake, working and playing with her idiosyncratic cousins and their friends, but her sense of belonging is disrupted when her dad returns and he and Nana force her to move to the rich side for two weeks.

The family runs an inexpensive motel on the original, working-class side of North Lake Emma’s parents met when he taught sailing lessons at the more modern, highbrow resort area called Lake North. Emma’s mother was raised there, but Emma hasn’t visited in years.

Unexpected complications mean she has to spend the three weeks of her father’s honeymoon with her mother’s side of the family in the resort town where they live. Between memories of her mother, her anxious father, and Nana, her wealthy, patrician, paternal grandmother, who helped raise her, Emma’s grown up more than a little anxious herself. Seventeen-year-old Emma’s dentist father has just remarried, 10 years after divorcing Emma’s addict mother, who later died of an overdose. Prolific author Dessen ( Once and for All, 2017, etc.) spends summer at the lake.

The Rest of the Story by Sarah Dessen