Someone Like You Reading Response

Someone Like You 

There are about 750,000 teen pregnancies a year. “Someone Like You,” by Sarah Dessen deals with the topic of teen pregnancy. Many teen girls become pregnant and face many tough decisions. Although the main character, Halley isn’t the one pregnant, her best friend Scarlett is. Not only is Scarlett pregnant, but also the father of the child dies in a devastating motorcycle accident. This book educates the reader on how hard teen pregnancy is but also how great a baby can be.

            Finding out that she is pregnant is really hard on Scarlett. How will she tell her mom? Should she keep it? What would people think? Scarlett under goes hard decisions and problems.  “You should have heard her. All this stuff about the mistakes she’d made and how I should have known better. Like doing this was some way of proving her the worst mother ever,”(101). Just like Scarlett, parents don’t always like the idea of their child being pregnant. This teaches the reader that telling your parent isn’t easy. “She says we’ll go to the clinic on Monday and make an appointment. For an abortion,”(102). Scarlett doesn’t want an abortion, but her mom says that’s what she should do and it almost doesn’t matter Scarlett’s opinion. Dessen was trying to teach reader that dealing with parents is hard, also that choosing what to do with the baby is hard. I think Dessen made this book to teach kids that teen pregnancy is hard, however she’s not like one of those advertisements that is saying all of the bad things about teen pregnancy, it’s giving readers something to connect to.

            At the same time as showing how hard teen pregnancy is, Dessen shows all of the good things that come with it. Scarlett learns who’s there for her. She develops a closer relationship with her mom, who at first wants her to have an abortion, and later can’t wait for the baby to be born. After going through the “scariest moment in her life,” she gets to see her baby and instantly falls in love. “’A girl,’ Scarlett said softly. ‘I knew it. She has my eyes, and my hair,’”(277) This is the moment where she doesn’t doubt herself for a second for keeping the baby. It teaches the reader that it’s worth all of the morning sickness and confusion, having her baby. Now Scarlett feels like part of Michael is still with her.

            Teen pregnancy is a big social issue. They don’t always have the support of family and friends like Scarlett does. I think Dessen must care a lot about this topic because her book spreads awareness to readers everywhere. It’s hard to write books about teen pregnancy because you don’t want to support it but at the same time you don’t want to discourage people who already have children. I think the author did a really  incredible job of spreading knowledge about the topic to teens.