Sarah Dessen is one of my favorites when it comes to YA romance. I adored her as a teen, but I haven't been enjoying her new releases as much (although I've recently reread some of my old favorites and those hold up). This one was much better for me than her last book, but I still had some issues.

I understand what she was trying to do with the discussion on class. Emma Saylor comes from an upper middle class, potentially just upper class, family. Her mother's extended family, who she's staying with, are blue collar. The lake is split between North Lake, the working class side, and Lake North, where the rich people stay. I appreciated the attempt, but everything about it seemed so black and white. Every rich person, excepting the main character, was a jerk when it benefited Emma Saylor's realization about class. Every single rich person. It didn't matter that until the plot required it, they had been incredibly kind, caring, considerate individuals. They would just randomly turn into a jerk. You can make a point about class without making all the rich people act like jerks, or alternatively actually make them jerks instead of have them act out of character.

I also had some difficulty getting into the romance. I thought the love interest was her cousin at the beginning of the book so making the switch from that to they're gonna get together was a little rough. And also some aspects of their getting together made me cringe. Emma Saylor got invited on a date to lake prom by a rich boy and needed to go buy a dress. Roo (the love interest who was not the boy who invited her) went along to help her pick it out. At the shop, the sales person assumed he was the boyfriend and neither of them corrected her. I understand that trope. It can be cute, both people fantasizing that it could actually be true when neither is ready for the relationship yet. But it's not cute when she's literally preparing for a date with another guy. It was very uncomfortable to read and did not make me root for them as a couple.

There were way too many characters in the book. It was intentional, her extended family was meant to be huge and messy and she had difficulty keeping track of them as well, but I couldn't follow who a bunch of the people were. Like I said above, I thought Roo was one of her cousins for the first 80 pages or something like that. Just because it was intentional, didn't mean it worked. Even by the end of the book I couldn't keep track of all the characters and their relationships to each other. There were just a number of characters who had unnecessarily small roles, or sometimes two would be introduced when one would have worked. It was too much for me.

A small thing is Emma's sense of humor. Throughout the book, we're constantly told she's really funny but people don't get it. Usually people who are not the greatest people. All her close friends understand her humor perfectly and think she's hilarious. Only, I never found her funny. And it makes for a kind of unpleasant read when you're frequently told she's funny but don't agree.

But honestly, none of those things were really that big of deal. They're all kind of nitpicky. The reason this got 3 stars from me, despite me a fine YA contemporary, is the formula. Sarah Dessen has a formula she sticks to in her books. It's a good formula. I love a lot of her books that use this same formula. But the problem is, I've read so many of her books, that none of this felt new anymore. Pretty much every single element in this book I could point to in one of her previous books. It's really hard to appreciate a book for what it is when you're constantly thinking "The Truth About Forever did this better, Lock and Key did that better, Just Listen did this better." It's not just the formula of the plot, but specific characters and relationships and scenes and plot points have been in her other books, and I think I'm just tired of seeing the same things.

On it's own, sure I'd recommend it if you enjoy YA contemporary romance. It was fine and I think you'd probably enjoy it more than I did. I think I'm just tiring of Dessen as a writer in general. I've read everything she's written up to this point, but this may be the last time I pick up one of her new releases. They're just not for me anymore.