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Unlock your heart and the rest will follow.
Ruby is used to taking care of herself.
But now that she’s living with her sister, she’s got her own room, she’s going to a good school, and her future looks bright.
Plus there’s the adorable boy next door.
Can Ruby learn to open her heart and let him in?
“All the Dessen trademarks here” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
Sarah Dessen is the winner of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for her contributions to YA literature, as well as the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award.
Books by Sarah Dessen:
That Summer
Someone Like You
Keeping the Moon
Dreamland
This Lullaby
The Truth About Forever
Just Listen
Lock and Key
Along for the Ride
What Happened to Goodbye
The Moon and More
Saint Anything
Once and for All
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Creators
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Publisher
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Awards
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Release date
April 22, 2008 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781429592376
- File size: 323625 KB
- Duration: 11:14:13
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Languages
- English
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Levels
- ATOS Level: 5.3
- Lexile® Measure: 840
- Interest Level: K-3(LG)
- Text Difficulty: 4-5
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Reviews
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Sarah Dessen has earned a well-deserved reputation tackling tough topics that resonate with young adult girls. Her latest is not up to her usual standard. Narrator Rebecca Soler seems to be on automatic pilot as she recites the story of 17-year old Ruby. Abandoned by her alcoholic mother, she is reunited with her older sister, Cora, who assumes custody after a ten-year absence. Ruby's story moves back and forth from the early days when Cora was her protector, to the middle years when Ruby and her mother were "two against the world," to her present attempts to figure out Cora's angle in showing up again. The story is uninspired melodrama, and Soler's performance is unable to give it life. N.E.M. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine -
Starred review from February 18, 2008
Dessen (Just Listen
; see Profile) inverts a familiar fairy tale: What if Cinderella got the prince, the castle and all its accoutrements, but wasn't remotely interested? After her mother abandons her, Ruby Cooper is flying below the radar of officialdom and trying to make it to her 18th birthday, when she's busted by the landlord and turned over to social services. Ruby is taken in by her estranged sister, Cora, who left for college a decade earlier and never looked back, and Cora's husband, Jamie, the wealthy founder of a popular social networking site. Resentful, suspicious and vulnerable, Ruby resists mightily, refusing the risky business of depending on anybody but herself, and wearing the key to her old house around her neck. All the Dessen trademarks are here—the swoon-worthy boy next door who is not what he appears to be, and the supporting characters who force Ruby to rethink her cynical worldview, among them the frazzled owner of a jewelry kiosk at the mall. The author again defines characters primarily through dialogue, and although Ruby and her love interest, Nate, sound wiser than their years, they talk the way teens might want to—from the heart. A must for Dessen fans, this will win her new readers, too. Ages 12-up. -
Ruby can handle everything on her own--or at least that's what she thinks when her mother abandons her a few months shy of her eighteenth birthday. Jodi Dick gives a sensitive performance as the teenaged Ruby, a young person older than her years. Dick conveys all Ruby's suspicion as she finds herself settled with her older sister, Cora, who left home years earlier and never came back. Ruby's feelings of alienation are palpable in Dick's delivery as Ruby finds herself living in Cora's gated community and going to a private school. Dick also provides believable voices for Ruby's energetic brother-in-law, the controlling Cora, and the engaging boy next door, who needs Ruby's help. As Ruby begins to trust her sister's motives and feel at home with her new family, Dick makes the teenager's change of heart fully credible. E.N. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
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