Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen

This is a Sarah Dessen book, so let's talk formula:
THE GIRL: Auden
THE PROBLEM: Insomnia and an inability to have fun and socialize like a normal teenager.
CAUSED BY: Overbearing parents' bitter divorce and the subsequent pressure, from both her mother and herself, to be supremely academic, resulting in a lack of any sort of childhood.
THE BOY: Eli
THE PROBLEM: Insomnia and not riding bikes competitively anymore because of TRAUMA.
CAUSED BY: The death-by-car-crash of Eli's best friend and bike-riding-partner-in-crime, Abe.
THE SETTING: That town with the beach house from The Truth About Forever, where Keeping the Moon was set.

Let's be honest here: The Truth About Forever is the best book that Sarah Dessen has ever written, with This Lullaby coming in a close second. While Along for the Ride tops neither of the aforementioned books, it comes in miles ahead of last year's supremely disappointing Lock and Key.
Auden and Eli's relationship is uncontrived and interesting, and though Sarah Dessen always keeps her hand deep in the Cookie Jar of Teenage Angst, she manages to stay away from the cloying butterscotchy melodrama so beloved of her authorial kin.
I don't have mountains of opinions to bestow upon you regarding this book. If you've read any Sarah Dessen book, you have, in most respects, already read Along for the Ride. It's moderately cute, passably well-written, fairly engaging, and other half-hearted, vaguely appreciative nouns, modified by adjectives that all mean "mediocre", which is what Along for the Ride is, particularly considering what Sarah Dessen is capable of.¹
Middle of the pile.


Kind of bored, sorry she took so long to write this review, and yours,
Eli

1. See above RE: The Truth About Forever