Win a Copy of Sarah Dessen’s Along for the Ride

When a publishing company offers to send me a book for review, I pull up the author’s Website before I say yes. And when I saw Sarah Dessen wrote Along for the Ride with a newborn baby at home, I shot off a quick reply.

Yes, this I have to read. I did . . . and I liked it enough that Babble has ten to give away.

On Dessen’s site, she admits writing Along for the Ride, “was a little escape once in a while, and I was more grateful for it than I expected.” As a mother who was there, oh so there, just four years ago, I knew what she meant. Sometimes, it’s better to feel like you can accomplish something – anything – than it is to sit in a room with your newborn and feel hopeless.

And the new mother in Dessen’s book does feel hopeless. With a husband who hasn’t a clue and an “I can do it myself” complex, new mother Heidi is a background character in what is technically a “young adult” novel. The main character is a teenager, and there is no sex (allusions to, yes, actual sex, sorry ladies – you’ll have to live vicariously elsewhere). But it’s her story that makes this a “parenting” read as much as that of main charater Auden, the recent high school graduate and product of divorce who is scrabbling out a niche within her family before she walks off to college to find a whole new her.

Because as Auden finds the light at the end of her summer, her stepmother finds the light at the end of the newborn tunnel too, and Dessen’s book rises above the light beach read to a summer story that reminds you, yeah, it’s hard. But if she can write a novel with a newborn, I can handle this.

Along for the Ride hit shelves yesterday, and you can pick up your copy at Amazon or get a free copy from Babble! Ten winners will earn their own, just shoot an e-mail to babblecontest@gmail.com with “Along for the Ride” in the subject line. Please include your name and address, and one winner will be chosen at random on June 30.

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