Just Listen Reviews - Portrait Reviews

Just Listen By Sarah Dessen
Review by: Amanda

For people who live in a glass house, the members of the Greene family do a remarkable job of keeping secrets from the rest of the world. Annabel, the youngest daughter of the family, has always done especially well at keeping her mouth shut in general, and avoiding the confrontation that speaking her mind could lead to. For someone who has spent her entire life in the middle of two older sisters who are always in conflict, this seems like it’s the right thing for her to do. But, this year, everything weighs on her more heavily. Her oldest sister is living in a new city, barely coming home. Her other sister is back at home from a failed modeling career and an eating disorder. And Annabel’s best friend has hated her since the beginning of the summer, due to an incident at a party that was entirely out of her control. Annabel begins to find solace in an unlikely place, the loner at school, Owen, who is known for having anger management problems, but is actually a sweet guy with a passion for music, any music. With his help, Annabel begins to learn to listen to herself and to be willing to confront her problems.

This novel is fantastic. I love that Sarah Dessen uses music as a way for Annabel to begin being honest with herself. Owen plays music for her from some of the most random bands he can think of, sometimes experimental music like water dripping from a faucet, that Annabel cannot stand, in an effort to get her to really talk about it. She has a habit of dodging the truth and her feelings, telling people what they want to hear, which I think a lot of people do, and Dessen’s plot device for Annabel learning how to argue her point is ingenious. The reason for the rift between Annabel and her best friend is pretty easy to figure out, but it is only revealed in bits and pieces for the majority of the novel. When the situation is revealed in its entirety, it is a pretty difficult scene to read, but important to the plot, and a big part of why Annabel keeps her mouth shut.

I’d say Just Listen ranks up there with my two favorite Dessen novels, The Truth About Forever and This Lullaby, and in fact, if you’ve read This Lullaby, you get a bonus appearance by characters from that novel, demonstrating that Dessen’s literary worlds are interconnected. It was done really well, not in a way that distracts from the story or anything, just a nod to her readers. This is definitely one of her books that I have to recommend. It deals with a lot of issues common amongst teenage girls, issues that aren’t really talked about a lot, and the novel stays very true to reality in that respect. It’s written beautifully, and I know I couldn’t put it down once I started reading.