At this point in her life, Macy Queen is "the girl who saw her dad die." Her dad dropped dead while running on a day where Macy had originally turned down going on a run with him, and she showed up late, and she feels guilty that she hadn't been there. Since then she's stopped running, or socializing with anyone besides her "perfect" boyfriend Jason, or doing much of anything besides studying and being "perfect" herself. Jason appears to be a robot in human form. When he goes away for the summer and Macy writes him an e-mail saying that she loves him, he immediately gives her the "we need a break" dumping e-mail. Lovely, eh?
Macy already has a summer job, taking over Jason's job at the library. It's not a happy place to work, as her coworkers are cold as ice to her. But she soon ends up with a night job, working for Wish Catering.
Everything else in Macy's life is orderly and quiet, but Wish Catering is chaos incarnate. I consider myself a "chaos magnet", but the owner, Delia, is even more of one, to the point where it weirds her out if nothing goes wrong. She's running the business alone after the death of her partner/sister, and is raising her teenage nephews as well as her own kid (and being pregnant), so there's naturally a lot of balls in the air. But her staff is a lot of fun. There's Bert (one nephew, obsessed with Armageddon) and Wes (a former delinquent turned artist), Kristy (a fun girl who was in a car accident) and Monica (her almost-silent sister), and Macy starts having fun hanging out with them. However, Macy's mom freaks out at the change in Macy's "perfect" behavior, not to mention how much Macy hangs out with Wes.
I have to say, I love Sarah Dessen. She takes wounded characters and shows how they all handle things in different ways. As Macy starts to recover and get more of herself back, it sets off things among others in interesting ways, and it all works together beautifully.
Four stars from me.
very accurate and helpful!!!<3
Posted by: Jewlz | May 25, 2008 at 08:34 AM
I love sarah dessen too! you nailed everything perfectly... i give u 5 stars!!!!<3333333
Posted by: Anneliese | May 25, 2008 at 08:36 AM