Review: Once and for All by Sarah Dessen

Once and for All by Sarah Dessen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

It kills me to rate this one so low but it just did not work for me. It had a lot of elements that are right in my wheelhouse but the pieces never came together for me. I liked the whole wedding planning component of the book. That allowed for some interesting moments. I think the book fell apart for me in two ways – the characters and the overall plot. I never connected with the characters – they all felt very cardboard to me. I didn’t like or dislike them – I just didn’t care. I had to force myself to pick this one up sometimes. I didn’t feel like any of the characters were particularly interesting or their relationships compelling. The ‘love’ story never felt like love to me. The characters never really grew in substantial ways. There are essentially two love stories in this book and neither one felt real. And that took away from the emotional resonance of the book. The plot just felt stagnant to me. The entire book I was asking myself what? Where are we going? And it felt very pulled together in a quick and easy bow at the end. The story wasn’t great, the end wasn’t great, all of it was eh. Which I’m sad to say because I’ve enjoyed her books before. I think you’d be better off picking up her novel Saint Anything which I really liked quite a bit.