Graduation is over and college is only a summer away. Remy is counting the days until she's gone, far away from her mother and her books, and a future step-father. When it comes to guys, Remy and her mother have very differing opinions. A successful romance novelist, Remy's mother believes in true love and refuses to give up the search, although so far unlucky in that department. Learning from her mother's love life, Remy prefers things simple, sticking to relationships that she ends when things get serious. Breaking up with guys is just another task for Remy, not really a hard thing to do. But when she meets Dexter, a determined clutz, her "tough-as-nails exterior" gets shaken up.

"I had no illusions about love... It came, it went, it left casualties or it didn't. People weren't meant to be together forever, regardless of what the songs say." Remy doesn't believe in love. And why should she? Her romance novelist mother is working on her fifth marriage, and her father, a '70s hippie singer, left her with only a one-hit wonder song to remember him by. Every time Remy hears "This Lullaby," it feels like "a bruise that never quite healed right." "Wherever you may go / I will let you down / But this lullaby plays on..." Never without a boyfriend, Remy is a compulsive dater, but before a guy can go all "Ken" on her (as in "ultra boyfriend behavior") she cuts him off, without ever getting close or getting hurt. That's why she's stunned when klutzy, quirky, alterna-band boy Dexter inserts himself into her life and refuses to leave. Remy's been accepted to Stanford, and she plans on having her usual summer fling before tying up the loose ends of her pre-college life and heading for the coast. Except Dexter's not following Remy's tried-and-true rules of break-up protocol. And for the first time, Remy's questioning whether or not she wants him to.

Sarah Dessen lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her husband, Jay, and teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of six novels for young adults. Among other accolades, That Summer, Someone Like You, Keeping the Moon, Dreamland, and This Lullaby have all been chosen as Best Books for Young Adults by the American Library Association, and This Lullaby was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize. In addition, That Summer and Someone Like You were adapted for the movie How To Deal, starring Mandy Moore.

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