This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen

Remy Starr thinks she has everything figured out when it comes to love. She has it down to a science. But the summer she graduates from high school everything she thinks she knows about it is put to the test.

It starts – like they all do – with a chance meeting. Remy is meeting with her future step-dad about the wedding preparations (it’s her mother’s fifth wedding) when a guy bumps her into the wall inflaming her temper and starting a roller coaster ride. The guy is Dexter and he’s in a band, more specifically the band that plays for her mother’s wedding reception. It’s not the only time that these two bump into each other and because they are thrown together so many times, Remy finally caves in.

To me, Remy is a combination of characters. She’s partly Colie from Keeping the Moon and she’s also a bit of Haley from the Someone Like You/That Summer movie How to Deal. She’s very critical and cynical of love – blame her mother’s multiple failed marriages. Not to mention she also has it in her mind that because it’s the summer before she goes off to college – she got into Stanford – she needs to leave with no attachments.

You would think, because she’s already broken so many of her rules when it comes to boys and her life, that she would see that just one more needs to be broken when it comes to Dexter. But then again, if she did that, we wouldn’t have much of a book, would we?

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. I loved that Scarlett Thomas – Haley’s best friend from Someone Like You – makes a cameo appearance, it was nice to see her doing so well after having Grace. Remy is another one of my favorite characters, because she knows she’s a bitch and she’s okay with it – most of the time. I also loved that her mom was a romance novelist who was working on a new book – even if it made me feel guilty for not writing my own stuff.

Bookshelf worthy? I’ve read this book so many times that I finally bought my own copy.