Book Review: The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen

Emaline is the daughter of a teen mom who had a summer fling while a rich family visited the beach town of Colby.  A couple years later, her mother met a young widower with two young girls. They were married and he adopted Emaline. He is the only dad she ever knew. In elementary school she started a family tree project. She already knew about her past but she wanted to know her father's story. So they exchanged emails and they grew to have somewhat of a relationship that centered mostly around school. As she entered high school her began to talk college with her. He helped encourage her to study and she got into Columbia. He told her to apply and to not worry about the rest (aka money). Right before graduation her sent an email saying that he could no longer pay for her to go. Then she didn't hear from him for a while.

Meanwhile her life moved on during the busy summer of a popular beach vacation town. Her family owned a vacation property management business and pretty much the whole family worked there.She didn't really care for it but she was getting nervous about heading off to college in the fall. She had never been outside of Colby.

She met a guy from New York that was there for the summer. They had a little bit of a fling but I'm glad that it didn't take up a lot of the story; he was kind of boring/annoying. I preferred her 10 year old half brother! Her father was in town to help sell his aunt's beach house so her half brother was there too. He loved hanging out with Emaline and working with her at her job.

The biggest theme of this book was Emaline becoming comfortable with leaving her small town but also still staying close to her family. Out of the three Sarah Dessen books I've read this summer, this and What Happened to Goodbye were pretty similar. I much preferred Saint Anything. But again, still a good read!