This Lullaby

Dexter crashes into her life, literally, at a car dealership. He is messy, talkative and relentlessly optimistic, and he plays in a scrappy band whose best-known song is about a vegetable. He is everything Remy usually avoids. Her friends Chloe, Jess and Lissa watch with interest, knowing her habit of dropping boys on schedule, while at home her mother plans a wedding and her brother falls for a very proper girlfriend.

What makes the book work is Remy herself. She is prickly, organized and often unkind, a narrator who says out loud what others only think, and Dessen does not soften her too quickly. Her fear of being left is explained with sympathy rather than lectures, and the change in her happens in small, believable steps. The family scenes are funny and touching, especially as Remy realizes her mother's romantic hopes are a kind of courage. There is some drinking and mature talk.

Lighter than some of Dessen's novels but with real feeling underneath, it stands alone and is often named among her best. About 345 pages in the Speak paperback.