“I didn't pretend to know Eli at all, but even so, I'd noticed that his manner was slightly hard to read. It was something in the way he talked that made it difficult to tell whether he was kidding or serious or what. This bothered me. Or intrigued me. Or both.”

American novelist, young adult fiction

Sarah Dessen is an American novelist known for young adult fiction. Her first book, That Summer, appeared in 1996. She has published more than a dozen other novels and novellas, and 221 quotes on this site are attributed to her. Her work centers on stories for young readers, and in 2017 she received the Margaret Edwards Award for part of that body of work. Two of her books were adapted into the 2003 film How to Deal.