Ya’ll can say it: “Jillian, you were doing so well for the last two weeks with posting every Saturday about a book and it’s moving!” and I would have to agree. I was impressing myself! Which is why, I’m feverishly writing this to get it up from the stroke of midnight meaning that it would be Sunday.
Aye!
This week we have a movie from the early 2000s! When I was a tween... (gosh that feels like a million years ago).
How to Deal is the movie this is being reviewed next to the, not one but TWO books that inspired it, That Summer and Someone Like You both of which are written by Sarah Dessen.
I happened to be talking to my sister last week about these two books. She made a good point, between the two of us, at one point we had almost every book Dessen had written. About four years ago on my Goodreads, I gave these two books stars and saidthat I had read them. I don’t remember reading them. Even while reading them, I could not recall...
Someone Like You focuses on 15 year old Halley, her friend Scarlett and her budding relationship with Macon and the change in the relationship with her mother.
That Summer tells the story about Haven (also 15 years old), how she’s coping with her father getting remarried, her sister’s marriage and how she reflects on a summer from so many years ago.
In true form, Dessen focuses and discusses real life issues. Dessen is really good (in my humble opinion) at handing the reader relatable topics.
I think that every teenager out there has faced that shift in the relationship with their parents from sharing everything to wanting to be left alone. Every teenager has felt like they know better (even when you don’t have enough life experience yet).
In Someone Like You, Halley went from telling her mother everything, to telling her nothing and wanting to make her own decisions because she felt she knew best.
In That Summer, Haven was still looking for her mother’s guidance until the end, when she kinda had a nervous breakdown. (I did not like Haven. She was okay in the beginning but as the story went on, I was turned off to her character. She became whining and child-like. She started out as being naïve but then she digressed).
I can totally see and understand why the movie writer(s) mashed the two up. It was fun to see that take. I want to say that How to Deal focused more on Someone Like You and less on That Summer. Yes, Ashley and Lewis were from That Summer (as was Haven's father and Lorna Queen BUT Halley's father was the radio DJ).
Halley was the main character, unlike the book Halley, movie Halley had a sister, Ashley (this was Haven’s sister in the book.) I feel like Someone Like You’s charactes were used in the setting for That Summer. If that makes any sense at all.
Now for the moment of truth! My ratings.
Someone Like You gets 4 coffee beans out of 5.
That Summer gets 3.5 coffee beans out of 5.
How to Deal gets 4 popcorn kernels out of 5.
- Jillian
