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Summary
Summary
From the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Once and For All
Love can be a very dangerous thing.
After her sister left, Caitlin felt lost.
Then she met Rogerson.
When she's with him, nothing seems real.
But what happens when being with Rogerson becomes a larger problem than being without him?
"Another pitch-perfect offering from Dessen." -- Booklist , starred review
Sarah Dessen is the winner of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for her contributions to YA literature, as well as the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award.
Also by Sarah Dessen:
Along for the Ride
Just Listen
Keeping the Moon
Lock and Key
The Moon and More
Someone Like You
That Summer
This Lullaby
The Truth About Forever
What Happened to Goodbye
Saint Anything
Once and for All
Author Notes
Sarah Dessen was born in Evanston, Illinois on June 6, 1970. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1993 with a degree in English with an emphasis in creative writing. Her first book, That Summer, was published in 1996. She mainly writes for young adults. Her books include Someone Like You, Just Listen, Along for the Ride, Keeping the Moon, Dreamland, What Happened to Goodbye, Saint Anything, and The Moon and More. She also teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Cass, activist, athlete, and academic success, runs away to work on a TV talk show with her boyfriend. Sixteen-year-old Caitlin, always overshadowed by her older sister, feels ever more invisible as her parents single-mindedly seek to locate and bring Cass home. Caitlin's best friend convinces her to try out for cheerleading. She makes the squad and discovers that her mother begins to live vicariously through her activities, just as she had done with Cass. Then, Caitlin meets Rogerson Biscoe and falls in love with him. He's not like the jocks at Caitlin's public high school; he's rich, attractive, enigmatic, and wild. She smokes dope supplied by Rogerson, a small-time dealer, and their physical relationship is consummated. Anger drives him, and he controls Caitlin with fear and pain. Shocked and physically hurt, she lies to her parents. Rogerson's beatings escalate, and Caitlin is shattered psychologically as well as physically. Powerfully written and not soon forgotten, Dreamland is the secret story of many contemporary teen relationships. Caitlin's dependency on Rogerson is a realistic and finely drawn portrait of a young woman without a strong sense of self-esteem. Characters are well developed; even Cass comes through as a complete person. The high-school milieu is accurately depicted as is a family's reaction to an unpredictable crisis. Compelling reading with contemporary teen appeal.-Gail Richmond, San Diego Unified Schools, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Caitlin O'Koren has always had to follow in the footsteps of her perfect older sister, Cassandra (homecoming queen, soccer star, student body president, soup kitchen volunteer). When Cassandra runs away from home, Caitlin finds herself trying to fill the gap Cass's absence creates. Shortly after, when she meets mysterious Rogerson Biscoe (a bad boy of the type Dessen hinted at in Someone Like You), Caitlin sees a way to forge a path for herself, away from Cass's shadow and the expectations weighing on her. Rogerson seems vaguely ominous, but Caitlin is taken by surprise when he first gets violent with her. Unwilling to give up the freedom she thinks her relationship gives her, she withdraws from her friends, starts failing in school and drifts into confusion. Her parents, the stereotypically meddling mom and stiff, emotionally distant father, and her close neighbors, two touchy-feely ex-hippies, are so caught up in their own concerns, and particularly in Cassandra's disappearance, that they fail to notice the difference in Caitlin (including what seems to be alarming physical evidence), pushing the limits of plausibility. For all these shortcuts, however, the characterizations have an unmistakable depth; readers may grow impatient with Caitlin and the obliviousness of her nearest and dearest, but they will believe she is real. Ages 12-up. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(High School) When you've grown up hidden in your sibling's shadow, what do you do when she's suddenly not there? Caitlin's older sister Cass is all set to head off for her first year at Yale, or so her family thinks, when she runs away with her boyfriend, leaving Caitlin less sure of her own identity than ever. ""I'd always counted on Cass to lead me. She was out there somewhere, but she'd taken her own route, and for once I couldn't follow."" Sarah Dessen crafts an affecting and believable portrait of a teenage girl drifting into a kind of dreamland, where life is less something she participates in than something that washes over her. Under pressure from her best friend, Caitlin becomes a cheerleader (""it was like being Barbie""), the one extracurricular activity Cass had never tried. But when Caitlin makes a decision to buck the rah-rah image by dating seductive, dreadlocked Rogerson rather than a bland jock, she winds up surrendering herself to an abusive relationship. Dessen tends to take shortcuts with characterization. Another cheerleader remarks how Rogerson ""looks like a drug dealer,"" and, what do you know, he is a drug dealer, his violent side superficially explained in a quick scene showing his father hitting him while Caitlin covertly watches. It would be nice if Rogerson and the rest of the supporting cast were a little more nuanced; if Caitlin's mother weren't such a stereotypical soccer mom; if the hippie family friends next door weren't so into tofu and massage. The book is pretty heavy on the symbolism, too. Even so, you can't help being pulled in by Caitlin's story, wincing as the bruises spread and hoping that this is a nightmare from which she will soon wake. c.m.h. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A teenager opts for the bad-choice route out of her perfect older sisters shadow in this intense, exhausting tale from the author of Keeping the Moon (1999). Caitlin has always felt semi-invisible next to soccer starsenior class presidentHomecoming Queen Cass, and that doesnt change in any important way when Cass suddenly takes off with a male friend for New York, leaving their mother Margaret, inconsolably fretful and distracted. When not even a successful bid to make the cheerleading squad earns Caitlin more than fitful parental attention, she plunges into faster waters, hooking up with Rogerson, a fifth-year senior with a police record, a BMW, and a thriving business dealing pot. At first its an exciting ride, filled with new friends and experiences, but Caitlins dream soon twists into nightmare. So dependent does her emotional state become on Rogersons ups and downs that even when he starts slapping her around, she hides the bruises and retreats into numb isolation, feeling trapped but lacking the will to escape. Dessens characters are familiar but not entirely typecast, which adds flavor to their interactionsthough they are paired off into stable and unstable relationships in a rather deliberate way. Caitlin finally gets the help she needs to break free after Rogerson furiously beats her in public, and piece-by-piece she rebuilds her self-respect in rehab, with the help of a liberating letter from Cass. Her descent and recovery come in believable stages, and though Rogerson is definitely the villain here, the author gives readers reason to spare a dash (a very small dash) of sympathy for him, too. (Fiction. YA)
Booklist Review
Gr. 8^-10. Caitlin's life changes the day her sister runs away with her boyfriend instead of heading off to Yale. Cass has been the perfect child in the family, and now that she's gone, Caitlin feels her world spinning out of control. Knowing she can't take her sister's place, Caitlin follows a different, more dangerous path, one that leads her to the magnetic Rogerson Briscoe. Dessen writes with utter realism as she describes Caitlin's descent, first into drugs, then into sex, and finally into a relationship that turns violent, as she becomes Rogerson's punching bag. It's a tribute to Dessen that even though she has plotted the story carefully and shown Caitlin's disintegration inch by inch, she doesn't telegraph Rogerson's ultimate abuse. Readers will be as blindsided by the first punch as Caitlin is. Nor does Dessen offer an easy out; Caitlin is institutionalized after a breakdown and must work her way back to normalcy. It's not only the plot that's vivid; the characters are also intensely real, with each of the supporting characters as strong and indispensable as the leads. The subtext of dreams that pervades the story adds an emotional dimension that is as affecting as the action. Another pitch-perfect offering from Dessen. --Ilene Cooper