Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen

Gut Instinct Rating - 4.5

Characters - 4.5

Believability for type and topics - 5

Similarity to other books - 5

Writing Style - 4

Excitement Factor - 4

Story Line - 3.5

Title Relevance - 5

Dust Jacket Art - 3

Goodreads users gave this book a 4.05. I think it was more deserving of a 4.28.

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Published in 2015

Pages: 417

Publishing Company: Penguin Group

Number of books by author: 27 Novels

Genre: YA Fiction

Let me start by saying I've tried to read a couple other (I believe two) Sarah

Dessen books before and I didn't even survive the first few chapters. But this story line had me captivated from the beginning. I would definitely recommend this book! It really was well done. The characters didn't completely annoy me for a young adult romance novel, which, surprises even me. A lot of them felt really similar, but when you look at the spread of characters, everyone is within the same groups of people, and in more cases than not, within the same family. It's a fairly small town that the school is in, so the family and friends are all going to have similar interests -in this case, their band and the pizza shop that comes with the family territory is common ground. But because of Sydney's accidental run-in with the pizza shop, she acquired an entire family, which means, a lot of similar characters. It didn't bother me so much, but it was nice that there was secondary characters, such as Ames, Irv, Jenn, etc. to help counteract some of the mono.... I would say monotony, but it's not even that. There's a calm about the sameness that exists within the characters, which is why even though it was bothersome, it was also a great positive of this book, and hardly effected the book's scoring. It was all very believable - yes, that even a family could coexist as this one did, and that another could fall apart as Sydney's did. It showed us all sides to the characters, all sides to the life of having a family member in prison; it showed us what it was like to have a family member with MS (although in great brevity, it did show us a small portion considering she was a secondary character). It showed us a lot with a little of everything, and that's hard to do with a YA story, which is probably what made this book so unique. I did find that the writing itself was a bit longwinded when looking at the story line as a whole. The story was, for me, supposed to be about Sydney's transition into a new environment as well as her acceptance of both her brother's prison sentence as well as David Ibbara. And I think we missed a lot of those last two components in many ways that could've been much better captured. In all honesty, this could've easily taken off into a duology - one that I would've read. I was disappointed with how it ended, even though it summarized a lot of these components. I think, the story line was about these really big moments, and we kind of missed that. I know this was categorized as a romance novel, and I think it was a really sweet one. But, for a true romance novel to exist, we need to see the challenges that each individual faces, and we didn't get a lot of that squared away with Sydney's challenging relationship with her brother, nor with her acceptance or qualms with the Ibarra family. I would've been much happier with less of the band drama and more about her relationship with Peyton. I could've been satisfied with the ending as it was, because I think it left enough answered and unanswered to be charming, and YA-ish; but I wanted more from her and Peyton. I needed more. This was the biggest downfall of the book. Had I received more, this could've easily been closer to a 5-star rating... almost a 5-star (4.6, probably being my estimate, because I could've brought up other areas that suffered as well just with this relationship being explored more). The title was well done. The art work... I really didn't get it. If someone could explain it to me, I would be forever grateful. I really didn't get the carousel reference or implant at all. What was the purpose of it being in the story, other than it being an interesting thing to happen and exist? It was a defining moment for their relationship as a group, but that could've been set anywhere, without the carousel. I just didn't get it. I didn't think it was significant in any real way, honestly. Is there something I'm missing? I think there is, and I need someone to fill me in...