The Rest of the Story by Sarah Dessen
Hi, my name is Cora. I love to read and play sports, especially soccer. I also love to read and play with my cats. My favorite color is blue.
This book, The Rest Of The Story, written by Sarah Dessen, is meaningful, powerful, and adventurous. A young girl, Emma Saylor, spends the summer with her deceased mother’s family on a lake, a little ways from where she lives with her dad and grandmother. Emma’s mother always used to tell Emma a bedtime story about a never ending lake with clear water, and a creaky old house with uneven floors. Emma’s original plan, spending the summer with her best friend, Bridget at the pool, gets interrupted when Briget’s grandfather has a stroke. Hoping to save her father’s and new stepmother’s honeymoon to Greece she offers to stay at the lake with a bunch of strangers she met only once when she was four, and doesn’t remember anything.
When she arrives, she doesn’t realize that there are basically 2 different lakes, even though there is just one. Lake North is where her father’s family spent most of the summer in a fancy resort where the rich people lived. North Lake is the community completely opposite from Lake North, where her mother and the rest of her mother’s family lives. Saylor is what her mother’s family calls her, and Emma is what her dad uses as a name, this book is all about discovering who you are when you are torn between 2 things.
During her time at her Mother’s family home, she finds out things she never knew about her mother. Hoping to connect her history she befriends Roo, her best friend when they were younger, and finds out things she never knew about her family. Throughout the book, Emma tries to understand her family better, and not just be the rich kid they know her to be. Emma must learn to confront her fears and learn her past to find the rest of the story. I really liked this book because it was about finding your past and who you are without other people telling you.
At times this book would get really slow, and then dramatically speed up, so I think the flow could have been better at times, but other than that I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes a good adventure.
