Along for the Ride: (Movie Tie-In)

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She just doesn’t fit in in the environment of fun summer activities, and with the teens who are all participating in those activities. She is also the author of Just Listen, The Truth About Forever and Lock and Key, which recently reached number 1 in the New York Times Bestseller list.

There definitely wasn’t enough of a build-up between Eli (Belmont Cameli) and Auden; in fact, we only get a TLDR of these two once-reserved characters whose unexpected intimacy grows during the nights they spend exploring Colby while it is asleep.Throughout the novel, she experiences many normal high school experiences she missed out on growing up.

When she goes to visit her father's new family in the beach town of Colby for the summer, Auden finds herself in a whole new world. I kept waiting to see the characters’ nuances and their place in the throughline: the joy and discomfort of experiencing growing pains while allowing yourself to be playful. Then Jason ends up visiting Colby around the same time as the Beach Bash and asks Auden to go with him.I couldn’t fully tell because we didn’t see the many interconnected moving parts in enough detail—there was no big brother to aid Auden’s realization of what she had been missing and what she could still have, there weren’t many meaningful interactions with her stepmother Heidi (Kate Bosworth did her best with limited screen time), and there weren’t enough moments with Auden and her dad (Dermot Mulroney) to back up her mother’s digs at him.

Auden's carefree older brother Hollis is traveling across Europe at the expense of their parents, who are under the impression that he is learning life skills and culture while abroad. She rejects the idea that she’s shallow and unserious because she likes dating, biking, and spending time with friends and Heidi.

Now that they have divorced and moved on to other relationships, Auden still finds herself awkwardly trapped in complex parental give-and-take. Auden's father starts dating before his divorce; his girlfriend then becomes pregnant before they marry. This is the first of three Dessen novels Netflix plans to adapt (along with "Once and For All" and "This Lullaby," one of my all-time faves), so YA romance lovers have plenty to look forward to. I could go on, but the truth is, my books are much more exciting than I am, and that's a good thing. At the end of the book, Auden has started university and is at Ray's, a diner she used to regularly visit when she had insomnia, with Eli.

Auden soon overhears multiple fights between Heidi and her father, mostly centered around caring for the baby. On one of their nocturnal outings, Eli bribes a bouncer to let Auden into a club for five minutes so they can dance. A daughter of academics and an exemplary student, her mother objects to her wanting to spend time with her father.

Her plans include buckling down with her college textbooks so that she has a head start on her coursework in the fall. During one of my favorite moments in the book, Auden’s father heads back to his study to work on his writing and he says to Auden, “You’ll be okay on your own?