The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen (review)

Emaline is a steady, pragmatic girl who works hard at her summer job with her family's vacation rental business in a fictional North Carolina beach town. She's disappointed in her birth father, who promised to send her to Columbia and then bailed on the finances, but she has a solid relationship with her longtime boyfriend, Luke, two solid best friends, and a solid future ahead of her at the nearby state university; even her relationship with her younger half-brother Benji is gratifying as she helps him cope with the pending break-up between their mother and his father. Enter Theo, the ambitious young documentary filmmaker's assistant who has come to town in search of a reclusive local artist. When Luke and Emaline suffer the common post-high-school break-up, Emaline turns to Theo, who is trying to make up for what he missed as a girlfriendless dork in high school by attempting to stage best-ever dates that most often fall flat. While the character constellation here is vintage Dessen, the struggling romance with barely likable Theo is a departure from the usual liaisons with perfect boys she creates for her characters (and readers) to swoon over. She makes it work, however, by keeping Theo little more than a convenient part of Emaline's character arc as she prepares to leave her high school life behind; he's a transition boy, a reminder that there will be another boy after the first one, and still others after that. From Emaline's sturdy character to the quotidian plotline to the unromantic romance, a quiet solidity pervades every aspect of this engrossing slice of an ordinary life, reminding readers that true happiness turns on accepting the fact that life provides more good-enoughs than best-evers. Prior fans of Dessen may balk at the lack of a perfect romance, but the gentle realism here may attract readers who find some of her other works too good to be true.