Just Listen

Noor Ismail
ELA, Timand
Book Report
3/14/2011
For May

In the book “Just Listen” by Sarah Dessen it talks about Annabel Greene’s school and family life. One of the main themes of the novel was that people aren't always what they seems also that honesty is the best policy. Annabel Greene looked like the perfect girl, the one who had everything including a glass looking house. She was a model, a popular girl, with the perfect family. It all begins to fall apart when her sister Whitney almost dies from anorexia. Then, when Annabel's best friend Sophie accuses Annabel of trying to sleep with her boyfriend, when he really tried to rape her, things changed forever.
      When Annabel returns to school the next year, everyone shuts her out. She begins to eat lunch alone on the wall outside, with only Owen, another outcast, sitting near her. One day, when Sophie causes a nasty scene, Owen finally talks to Annabel and offers to take her home. They strike up a friendship and have deep conversations about music, which Owen is really passionate about and even has his own radio station. "Music is the greater unit. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common." (pg. 96) Things start to get better for Annabel: she and Owen are a couple and Whitney is recovering. “As he leaned down to kiss me, I closed my eyes and saw not the flat black of the dark but something else. Something brighter, closer to light, shining small but ever steady. More than enough to go on as a part of me pushed up and out, finally, to meet it there.” (pg. 363)
      When Emily is almost raped by the same person as Annabel, Will. “Despite the thick make-up, they were still rimmed, haunted, and sad. Most of all, though, they were familiar. The fact that we were in front of hundreds of strangers changed nothing at all. I’d spent a summer with those same eyes-scared, lost, confused-staring back at me. I would have known them anywhere.” (pg.251)...