Saint Anything Review and Giveaway

I hate hype. When I pick up a book or watch a movie/show that has been pushed at me, I always expect to be disappointed. See: The Princess Bride (sorry!), Star Wars, Any Sports Thing Ever, and (I’m sorry again!) Outlander. Now, don’t get me wrong. I liked all those movies/books/shows well enough. It’s just that they were sold to me as THE BEST MOVIE/BOOK EVER and my expectations going in were too high. They just didn’t inspire the fanatical devotion I was hoping they would.

I prefer to go into reading a book/watching a movie with no expectations besides a jacket cover or a trailer. Or, in the case of one of my biggest obsessions ever, expecting to find it dumb. I mean, who wants to read a book about sparkly vampires? (I still laugh at my naive former self.)

So I was a little cautious as I opened the covers of Sarah Dessen’s twelfth published novel, because has it ever been hyped.

Thankfully, though, I loved it. Among the Dessen dozen, I think this book takes second place (more on which one takes first place in another post…).

Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen

Despite what advanced reviews said about Saint Anything, I didn’t find her twelfth novel “darker” or more “psychologically probing” than her others. I simply thought it was Sarah Dessen doing what she does best: keeping her finger on the pulse of what it’s like to be a teenager, trying to figure life out.

In the book, Sydney’s brother is serving a jail sentence for a crime he committed. Her father is ignoring their problems by being a quintessential workaholic. Her mother is desperately trying to blame anyone other than her son. Neither of them spend much time with their daughter, who has always been the good kid. Sydney. meanwhile, tries to figure out a way to stop being the invisible girl in her charismatic older brother’s shadow, especially now that she’s finally getting to know him…and realizes that he remembers his childhood very differently than she does.

As usual with any Dessen novel, one of the the best parts about it were the minor characters. The brother and sister that Sydney befriends–along with their quirky family–stole every scene. Her brother’s creepy friend who hangs around their house even after her brother’s incarceration made me as uncomfortable as he made Sydney. Her manic, controlling mother was eerily similar to mothers I’ve known. (Not mine, for the record. Love you, Mama!)

Sydney’s emotional journey was a satisfying one, although I did want to shake her on occasion and demand that she speak up for herself. And I loved, loved, loved that she adopted her friends’ mom as an adult to talk to when she needed advice. I often get frustrated by the lack of responsible adults in YA, and I thought this was a fantastic way to mirror what can happen in real life when someone’s parents aren’t as great as she’d like them to be.

So bottom line? If you like Sarah Dessen, you’ll want to pick up Saint Anything, because it’s one of her best. If you haven’t liked her past books, I’ll leave it for you to decide. And if you haven’t read Sarah Dessen and like YA–what are you waiting for? She’s a staple of the contemporary genre. Enter the giveaway below and see if we can get you started!