Ok, first off, you should know that Sarah Dessen is my favorite author.  She could write an instruction manual for boiling water and I would read it.  But this novel, her twelfth overall, might just be my favorite one.  Let’s be honest, I might say that after reading each of them though.  Dessen has a fantastic ability to write romance novels that don’t really seem like romance novels.  While relationships are forming and you get all happy because the couple makes it, you are also reading about getting through rough times in life, getting your friends through rough times, and finding yourself.  Saint Anything is a good one.  It’s a story of hope, of finding a place in the world, of being seen as the person you want people to see, and those perfect nights that you will never forget.  Deep stuff disguised in a YA novel.

Sydney has always been second to her brother, apparently even while he is in jail.  She decides to switch schools in order to get away from being compared to him.  There, she meets her best friends who see who she is, not who her brother is.  She also meets the guy, her best friends brother.  Between seeing him at the family pizza place, to the carousel in the woods, they start dating.  Friends become family.  From a local pizza place, to a high school cover band, to sick parents and of course, the prison thing, this one’s got it all.  Sydney learns that sometimes saying something can lift a weight off your shoulders and that your friends are your family when your family is falling apart.  And most importantly, even if your feel invisible, someone sees you.

Sarah Dessen also wrote Along for the Ride, Dreamland, Lock and Key, among others.  If you haven’t read her books, have you really read anything at all?