Dear Sarah Dessen,

Dear Sarah Dessen,

            Our English 3 class is doing a “Read for a Lifetime” project.  Each student picks a book for the quarter and reads it.  While reading it, we have to blog about it.  First quarter we had a certain prompt we had to do for each week but for second quarter, our teacher gave us a list of suggestions we could do or we were able to come up with our own as long as they were approved.  Second quarter, I read “What Happened to Goodbye” and I enjoyed it so much!   Honestly, I’m not a fan of reading but I remember reading some of your other books in Jr. High and thought that it would be fun to read another one from your collection.  So many questions run through my mind when I read your books about how you wrote them.  The most common one being, are these experiences that you have gone through or that friends or family have gone through?  Or being creative, do you just come up with them?  I read what I think is your blog and it said specifically for this book, that when you were younger you didn’t like who you were so you like reinventing yourself through your books. Is that how it is for all of them?

            I’ve never had to move or switch schools so the whole making new friend’s thing never was a problem growing up.  My family has always been together so I never had to choose which parent I wanted to live with.  What I’m saying is, is that it is hard to relate to Mclean and the book.  I enjoyed reading it because I like knowing about other people’s lives.  Where they come from, who they are, what’s their story?  Questions like those always pop into my head whenever I meet someone new.  Reading about it just answered all those questions without even asking a person.  Even though Mclean isn’t real, that would be her story.  From a book, you get so much more out of it because, being an author, you can go more in depth and explain more about the persons’ life.  I also like knowing that people have more drama in their life than I do in mine.  Even though it didn’t seem like Mclean had drama in hers, she did. Her friends were never the cause of it but her family had a lot of it.  I’m not saying my family is filled with drama, mostly just friends, but drama is interesting to me.  I don't like being a part of it but it is funny to me.  So “drama” books, books that have a lot of teenager issues that actual teens go through, they are interesting to me.  That’s why I love your books so much.  I can find out other ‘peoples’ stories and what someone in the real world might have to go through.  I’ve only read about five of your books so I can’t wait to read more.