When it comes to relationships, Remy Starr does not mess around. She has learned everything she needs to know from her mother, a romance novelist currently working on husband number five, and from her father — a musician she never met, who wrote one hit song the day she was born, called it "This Lullaby", and then disappeared from her life. The song has followed her ever since. She treats it as proof of what men are worth.
So Remy has rules: no attachments, no illusions, a clean exit before anyone gets close. She has one summer left before college, a fifth wedding to plan, and no intention of complicating any of it.
Then there's Dexter — a musician, disorganised, permanently in motion, and improbably certain about her from the moment he sees her. He is, by every measure Remy uses, a bad idea. He is also completely unbothered by that, and he does not go away.
Sarah Dessen's summer novel is about a girl who has built a whole worldview out of one absent father, and what happens when someone patient enough turns up to test it. Frank about sex and about grief, funny about music and families, and considerably sadder underneath than its premise suggests.