8) Dreamland-Sarah Dessen

When you read the back of a book for a synopsis of what you might be indulging in, you get a pretty good idea of what you'll get. I would like to point out that this was absolutely NOT the case with this book. 

The description tells you that on her sixteenth birthday, Caitlin's older sister Cassandra runs away. Of course, this is going to cause drama and because no one is going to read a book about how a girl properly adjusts to this structural change in her life, things are going to go downhill. Okay, fine. Will she begin cutting herself? Become a drug addict? Is she going to spiral into a alcohol ridden depression? When she meets her boyfriend, Rogerson, something just seems off about him. You can tell right away that he's bad news, but you're not sure why. You read and read and wait for it until his downfall and her secret smacks you in the face. Suddenly, I'm screaming at the pages, "WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?! THIS CAN'T BE REAL!"

Now, as a general rule, I stay far away from the young adult section. I feel that 87% of it consists of supernaturally bizarre work, another 9% is about bulimia, "I-don't-fit-in!" or "my-boyfriend-doesn't-love-me-anymore!" books, but the remaining 4% seems to be okay. This was not the way to introduce myself into the section, let me tell you. 

However, I could absolutely not put this book down. I read it from cover to cover. It was absolutely gripping. It brought to light something that I genuinely didn't think was such a problem among high school/college girls. I thought that it was just something that they pulled out on Lifetime. It was another book where you wanted to scream at the main character to realize that what was happening was wrong and she needed to say something to fix it. Halfway through and once I put the book down, I remained absolutely horrified. 

If you want something to get you really good, I highly recommend this. If you want to read something really well written, I highly recommend this. What I'm saying is, you should really read this. Although, you should be forewarned (if this wasn't already abundantly clear). You might want to be in an emotionally stable place because this will rock you sideways. 

This was the day that I became a Sarah Dessen addict.