This Lullaby

I came to This Lullaby on a hot afternoon when I wanted something warm and fast, and it turned out to be slower and pricklier than I expected. That ended up being the reason I liked it. Remy, the girl at the center, does not want to be liked at first. She wants to be right about love, which is that it fails. I have known girls like her, and I was a little like her at eighteen, armed with rules that felt like wisdom. Reading her summer felt like sitting next to my younger self and wanting to shake her and hug her at once.

Quick facts first so we shelve it straight. This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen was first published in 2002, and the Speak edition cited here runs 345 pages. It is a standalone young adult romance, not part of a series. The story follows Remy through the summer after high school, her mother who writes romance novels and collects ex husbands, her friends Lola and Jess and Chase, and a musician boy named Dexter who plays with a band called the Truth Squad and refuses to take her first no for an answer.

The girl with the rules

Remy Starr, if I remember the surname right, opens the book by breaking up with someone. It is summer. School is done. College waits in the fall. Her boyfriend of the moment sits across from her expecting a normal day, and she ends it clean. She has a system. Date for a short stretch. Keep it light. End it before feelings get messy. Never say the big words first. Never believe them when a boy says them.

She learned this at home. Her mother is a successful romance writer, famous for books where love wins, and her private life tells a different story. By the time Remy is eighteen, her mother has married several times. There are stepfathers in the past and a new man hovering in the present. The house holds the evidence of those rounds, wedding photos put away, names that changed, jokes the family tells to smooth over awkward dinners. Remy loves her mother, but she reads the record as proof. Love ends. People leave. Better to leave first.

What makes Remy more than a slogan is that she is good at other parts of life. She works hard. She is loyal to her friends. She notices when people need help and shows up with food or rides. She is funny in a dry way that can tip into mean when she feels cornered. I liked her competence. I also wanted more softness earlier, because the book keeps her guarded for a long while and some readers will tire of being held at arm's length.

Her friends fill out the picture. Lola is bold with fashion and talk, the kind of friend who says what Remy only thinks. Jess is steadier, dating Chase, trying to keep the group together through a summer when everyone senses change coming. Chase is easy company, a boy who likes Jess plainly and does not play games about it. The four of them have history. They know each other's orders at food stops. They know which songs make which person sing. That easy texture is one of Dessen's best skills. She writes friend groups that feel lived in, not assembled for plot.

A mother who sells forever

The mother deserves her own space because she shapes every choice Remy makes. She writes for a living about couples who fight and reunite by the last page. She goes on tour. She takes calls from editors at odd hours. She believes in her work, and the book never mocks that. At the same time, her marriages keep ending, and each ending lands on her kids.

Remy has brothers in the mix, younger, watching the same pattern from different angles. One of them still hopes each new man might stick. Remy protects him by acting sure. She tells him love is a story people pay for at the store, not a plan for a house. He half believes her and half wishes she would stop. Their scenes together are short and sore. I wished there were more of them, because Remy drops the armor fastest around kids.

The current stepfather figure, a man named Don in my memory of the book, tries hard. He is kind in an awkward way. He makes dinner. He asks about plans. Remy keeps him at a distance because closeness feels like signing up for another goodbye. Her mother sees this and calls her on it, gently at first and then with more heat. You think you are being smart, she says in so many words. You are being scared. Remy hears it as another line from a book. The reader hears the truth inside the line. Both things can sit together. Mothers can be right in ways that still sting.

I kept thinking about the job of writing romance while living through splits. Dessen never turns the mother into a fraud. She shows a woman who knows how to shape a satisfying ending on paper and still cannot force life to follow outline. That felt honest to me. People give advice they cannot follow. Writers sell hope they struggle to hold. Remy reads this as lies. Older readers may read it as the most human part of the book.

Enter Dexter, loud and late

Dexter arrives the way trouble always arrives in summer, through friends and noise. He plays in the Truth Squad, a local band with big energy and shaky plans. He is tall and rumpled. His hair does what it wants. He talks too much when nervous, which is often. He shows up at parties with his bandmates, carrying gear and stories, asking for food and attention in equal measure.

Remy meets him at a party or a cookout, the kind of crowded evening where everyone is between plans. Dexter notices her right away. She notices him and files him under no. Too messy. Too eager. Too much feeling in public. He asks her out. She says no in a way meant to end it. He hears it as a start.

What follows is a long pursuit, and here is where readers will split. Dexter keeps appearing. At her work. At gatherings. On roads where she drives. He brings music. He brings jokes that only he laughs at first. He remembers small things she says and repeats them back days later. He does not play cool. He plays present. Some readers will find this charming. Others will find it pushy. I landed in the middle for a long stretch, then tipped toward charmed because Dessen shows Remy setting real limits and Dexter learning to respect them, slowly and imperfectly.

The band gives the middle its shape. The Truth Squad plays gigs at small venues and parties. They argue about set lists. They load vans in heat. They eat gas station food at midnight. Dexter sings with his whole body, eyes shut, off key in places and all in. Remy watches from the side with her arms crossed, then uncrosses them without noticing. Music does what talk cannot. It gets past her rules because it does not ask for promises. A song ends. Nobody has to swear it lasts forever. That freedom lets her feel something without signing a contract.

There is a car in this book that matters more than it should. Dexter drives something battered that breaks down and fills with friends and gear. Rides in that car become a measure of trust. First Remy refuses lifts. Then she accepts one to be polite. Then she seeks them out. Dessen tracks the shift through small logistics, who sits where, who controls the radio, who falls asleep against a window. I loved those details. They show change without speeches.

Parties, jobs, and late talks

The summer moves through work shifts and evenings. Remy works, I think at a shop or office job that keeps her in clean clothes and sharp talk. Lola works too, and the girls compare notes on customers and managers. Days are bright and boring in the way real summers are. Nights carry the weight. Bonfires. Kitchens full of people. Porches where someone always stays too late.

Jess and Chase give Remy a mirror she does not want. They are young and serious in a quiet way. They fight and fix. They talk about fall plans without panic. Remy watches them and tells herself they will fade like everyone else. Lola pushes back. She calls Remy cold when Remy acts cold. Their friendship has teeth. One fight between them stomped on my chest a little, because Lola names what the reader feels. You act like caring makes you weak. It does not. It makes you present.

Remy and Dexter start spending time together in the gaps. He helps her carry things. She teases his band. He writes her a song, or tries to, and she pretends it means nothing while memorizing the words. They talk on phones late. They meet after shifts. He tells her about his family, which is messier and warmer than hers in different ways. She tells him almost nothing, then tells him one true thing and hates how good it feels to say it out loud.

Dessen paces this with patience that some readers will call slow. There are many scenes of hanging out that do not advance plot in a strict sense. People eat. People tune guitars. People wait for rides. I did not mind, because the hanging out is the point. Trust builds in boring hours, not grand gestures. By the time Remy lets Dexter hold her hand in front of people, the smallness of the act carries size. She chose to be seen wanting someone. For her, that is huge.

One night near the middle broke my heart in a useful way. Remy and her mother fight about Don and about love and about the books her mother writes. Remy says the books lie. Her mother says the books tell people that trying matters. Voices rise. A door shuts. Later Remy sits with Dexter and cannot explain why she is crying, because the fight was about three things at once and none of them fit a clean sentence. Dexter does not fix it. He sits. He listens. He offers fries or a ride or some small normal thing. That restraint matters. He learns that showing up beats showing off.

Falling anyway

Around the last third, Remy stops pretending Dexter means nothing. She lets him into her days. She meets his bandmates as people, not props. She hears the same songs with new ears. She starts to picture fall with him in it, which scares her more than any breakup speech. Hope feels riskier than control.

Dessen handles the turn with care. Remy does not flip from cynic to believer in one kiss. She tests Dexter. She picks fights to see if he leaves. She goes quiet after good days because good days feel like setups for loss. Dexter fails some tests. He gets loud. He gets needy. He shows up late or says the wrong thing to her mother. But he keeps coming back and keeps saying what he means. Slowly Remy learns the difference between a boy who performs feeling and a boy who practices staying.

The song of the title threads through here. A lullaby that Dexter plays, simple and sweet, becomes their shorthand. He hums it while driving. She catches herself humming it at work. It is not a hit. It will not save the band. It is theirs in the way summer things become yours, because you heard them while becoming someone new. I found this thread moving without feeling forced. Music as memory is something Dessen writes better than almost anyone in this corner of fiction.

There are strong scenes with the stepfamily as the season wears on. A dinner where everyone tries too hard. A morning where Don fixes something small without being asked. A talk between Remy and her mother in a car where neither looks at the other, which lets them say more. Remy starts to see her mother as a person who keeps trying, not a warning. That shift does not excuse the past. It softens the future. Remy begins to allow that a marriage ending does not prove love was fake. It proves that round ended. Next rounds might hold. Might is doing heavy work there, and the book knows it.

The crisis, when it comes, is not a villain with a plan. It is fear doing its usual job. Remy pulls away right when things feel best. She tells Dexter they have no future. College. Distance. Different lives. She uses logic as a shield. Dexter argues, then goes quiet in a way that scares her more than shouting. Friends take sides without fully taking sides. Lola tells Remy she is making a mistake. Jess holds space. Chase says little and means it. The band keeps playing because bands do, and the music sounds thinner without the girl in the side seats who pretended not to care.

What drags and what sings

Time for plain criticism, because this book needs it the way Remy needs a friend who tells truth. Remy can be prickly past the point of fun. Her rules repeat. Her put downs land on people who do not deserve them. Early chapters especially keep readers outside her head while she judges everyone inside it. If you need a warm heroine from page one, you will struggle. I stayed because Dessen lets Remy be wrong on the page and learn in front of us, but I skimmed a few party scenes where the banter circled.

The middle sags. Gigs blur. Days at work blur. A reader who wants plot will wonder when something will happen. Something is happening, trust forming in small doses, but Dessen could have cut twenty pages of hanging out without losing the effect. Dexter also tips toward manic at times. He talks and talks. He crashes events. He treats her no as an opening. The book frames this as devotion, and mostly earns it by showing him listen and change, but a few scenes read as boyish persistence played for laughs when a firmer line would have helped.

What sings is the voice. Dessen writes teens who sound like teens without turning dumb. They work jobs. They worry about gas money. They love their friends with ferocity and still wound them. She writes mothers who are full people, not obstacles. She writes summer heat you can feel, parking lots that hold echoes, kitchens that smell of grease and sunscreen. The romance, when it lands, feels earned because it was built from rides and songs and sitting through discomfort, not grand speeches in rain.

The theme is simple and well held. Love may not last, and it is still worth choosing. Remy starts the book believing a good ending must be forever to count. She ends it closer to her mother's truer lesson. Trying counts. Showing up counts. A summer that changes how you love counts even if the boy does not follow you to campus. Dessen does not promise Dexter and Remy forever on the last page. She promises them honest for now, with a door open. I found that braver than a wedding.

Should you read it. If you like character led young adult romance with music and friend groups, yes. If you want fast plot or fantasy stakes, look elsewhere. If Remy annoys you early, give her until the car rides and the late talks. She grows. So does Dexter, from noise to steadiness. I closed the book thinking about my own rules at eighteen and how many were fear in smart clothes. That sting is the point. Books that name your old armor help you check if you still wear it.

A note on the facts

To keep it straight for your shelf, This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen first came out in 2002, with the Speak edition cited here at 345 pages. It is a standalone story about Remy, her romance writer mother and shifting stepfathers, her friends Lola and Jess and Chase, and Dexter with the Truth Squad band across one long summer. If you remember a prickly girl, a persistent musician, and a simple song hummed in cars, you remember this book.