"'The girl who has everything,' he'd said, moving his hands in a tight, circular motion, as if that was all it took to encompass something so vast, not to mention vague." (page 2)
Just Listen, by Sarah Dessen, shows how to others, someone's life could seem perfect, like they have it all...when that's not really the case. Meet Annabel, a model, who's life changes all because of one person. Sophie was the new girl when Annabel met her, in sixth grade. Sophie followed Annabel's older sister and her friends around during the summer. After Sophie runs off and leaves her stuff when Annabel's sister yells at her, Annabel and her best friend, Clarke, brought Sophie her stuff. Once this happened, they became friends. But once Annabel and Sophie started getting closer, Annabel grew apart from Clarke. Skip to modern day: Annabel and Clarke don't speak anymore, Sophie hates Annabel, Annabel has no one, and she has no motivation in her modeling career. On the first day of school, Annabel ate lunch all alone. She saw the mysterious, judged Owen Armstrong, who has been accused for so many things that Annabel doesn't know what to believe...so she doesn't believe any of it. She also saw Clarke eating lunch by her, but when Clarke saw Annabel, she left. And to top it all off, Annabel saw someone who brought back not only some bad memories, but also her lunch.
I chose this book because I had read some Sarah Dessen books before. I liked, and still like, her style of writing. She doesn't write about meaningless things, she writes about stuff that could actually happen in real life to anyone. Her books have meaning, and a real story behind them. Her books are so realistic that I, as a reader, can sometimes compare an event or a series of events that took place in my life to the story. Also, I liked that it was about music.
I see a connection between Annabel, the main character, and Elsa, from Disney's movie Frozen. The connections that I see emerging between Annabel and Elsa is that they're both masking their feelings. They both don't let anyone in so no one can hurt them...but this is only making it worse in the long run. Annabel is masking all her sadness with fake smiles and a practiced façades when she is modeling. And Elsa is masking all of her sadness, loneliness, anger, and all of her other feelings with a practiced façade and a pair of gloves when in the presence of other people. "Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know," is what Elsa says in the song, Let It Go. Elsa tells herself to not feel, and that doing this will keep others from finding out her secret. She's bottling her feelings inside until she finally explodes. This is also what Annabel is doing. She's pushing all of her emotions to the side and bottles them up when she's modeling, so no one finds out what happened. They're both trying to "fake it 'till you make it," which doesn't always work...because sometimes some people can see through the fake smiles and the façades.
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