40 Fun Facts About The Moon and More

Colby, Emaline's seaside hometown in The Moon and More, lies on the coast of which American state?

North Carolina is home ground for Sarah Dessen, who lives in Chapel Hill and modeled Colby on a beach town where her family spends summers.

Which summer job keeps Luke, Emaline's boyfriend in The Moon and More, shirtless around Colby?

Cleaning pools came straight from life: Sarah Dessen says the novel began when a chatty, shirtless pool guy turned up at her own beach rental.

Which Ivy League school admits Emaline in The Moon and More before her father backs out of paying?

Columbia was her dream school, but without the money she accepts a full scholarship to a state college closer to home.

How is young Benji, who arrives with Emaline's father in The Moon and More, related to her?

Half-brother Benji is the son of her father's marriage, and he quickly grows attached to both Emaline and Luke.

What kind of film has Ivy, Theo's demanding boss in The Moon and More, come to Colby to make?

A documentary about Clyde is her goal: he was a celebrated painter who vanished from the art world at the height of his career.

In which city does The Moon and More end, at a gallery opening for Clyde's collected paintings?

New York hosts the gallery show of Clyde's collected works that November, and Emaline, visiting with Benji, admits the city still confuses her.

What does Emaline discover about Luke that ends their long romance in The Moon and More?

He cheated on her with an older woman who left her phone number on his windshield, and by morning the couple have agreed to take a break.

By the end of The Moon and More, what does Emaline realize about Theo, her ambitious summer romance?

He was using her to get close to Clyde, the artist his boss wanted on camera, and he turns bitter once she ends it.

What does the family firm where Emaline works in The Moon and More offer Colby's summer tourists?

Vacation house rentals are the trade of Colby Realty, where every property has a name of its own, from Heron's Call to Jolly Pirate.

In The Moon and More, what proves to be the reason Emaline's father went back on paying her tuition?

His divorce is something Emaline only learns of later; at the time he simply withdrew the offer without a word of explanation.

Margo and Amber, who work beside Emaline at Colby Realty in The Moon and More, are her what?

Stepsisters Margo and Amber are Rob's daughters, and Emaline bickers most with Margo, who loves imposing rigid rules at the office.

Which member of Emaline's family owns the rental agency where she works in The Moon and More?

Her grandmother, Mrs. Merritt, is the real boss of Colby Realty, which she and her husband started more than fifty years before the story.

Where does Daisy, Emaline's stylish best friend in The Moon and More, work for her own parents?

A nail salon called Wave Nails is her family's shop, though Daisy designs and sews her own clothes and is bound for art school.

Which easygoing friend of Emaline ends The Moon and More working for Clyde on an art tour?

Morris has been fired from one job after another for needing every instruction spelled out, so steady work with the artist is a happy ending.

Which fictional university does Emaline plan to attend on a full scholarship in The Moon and More?

East U is where Luke is heading too, and the school reappears in later Sarah Dessen novels as the college several characters attend.

What does Benji do during the art show in The Moon and More after learning he must leave Colby?

Benji runs away because the summer with Emaline was his first real taste of simply being a kid, and Luke joins the search for him.

After Theo abandons Ivy to chase a job with Clyde in The Moon and More, how do his plans turn out?

He ends up jobless: Clyde never actually offered him anything, and Ivy has no reason to take back the assistant who walked out on her.

At what stage of life did Emaline's mother become pregnant with her in The Moon and More?

As a teenager, her mother had Emaline with Joel, a summer visitor who soon drifted out of their lives; Rob married her mother and adopted Emaline at three.

What has Emaline just arranged for Theo in The Moon and More when he impulsively kisses her?

An interview with Clyde is what Theo and his boss had been chasing, and it lands on the very day Emaline and Luke agree to a break.

What task brings Emaline's long-absent father to Colby for the summer in The Moon and More?

Selling a relative's house keeps him in town for part of the summer with his young son, yet he and Emaline still struggle to communicate.

Clyde, the reclusive artist of The Moon and More, first appeared in which earlier Dessen novel?

Along for the Ride gave him a small part as a Colby business owner, and Netflix released its film of that novel in 2022.

Besides a laundromat, which Colby business does the reclusive artist Clyde own in The Moon and More?

A bike shop called Abe's Bikes is his, and the laundromat hides a secret room where he also sells pie.

Spinnerbait, the band heard on Emaline's date with Theo, first turned up in which Dessen novel?

This Lullaby introduced the band as the despised rivals of its own group, Truth Squad, and they have been name-dropped in Dessen's novels ever since.

Wes, a cousin of Luke in The Moon and More, is the love interest in which Sarah Dessen novel?

The Truth About Forever follows Macy, who takes a job with Wish Catering and grows close to Wes, one of the crew.

Which real beach town on the Bogue Banks is Sarah Dessen's model for Colby in The Moon and More?

Emerald Isle is where Sarah Dessen spends summers, and a chat with a local there about life in a holiday town sparked the novel.

Which Sarah Dessen novel, about a girl whose brother is jailed, followed The Moon and More in 2015?

Saint Anything left the beach behind to follow Sydney, whose family is devastated when her brother Peyton paralyzes a boy while driving drunk.

Which 2003 Mandy Moore film was adapted from two novels by The Moon and More author Sarah Dessen?

How to Deal wove the plots of her first two novels into one story, with Allison Janney and Peter Gallagher also in the cast.

Which American Library Association honor for teen literature did Sarah Dessen receive in 2017?

The Margaret A. Edwards Award recognized seven of her earlier novels together, among them Dreamland and Just Listen.

Besides Colby, which fictional town modeled on Chapel Hill recurs in Sarah Dessen's novels?

Lakeview stands in for the college town where Sarah Dessen lives, and most of her novels away from the beach are set there.

How does Clyde quietly tease Ivy and Theo for looking down on Colby in The Moon and More?

Assigning pointless books is his private joke: he insists that random old volumes are essential to understanding his paintings.

Why did Clyde walk away from his soaring art career, as The Moon and More eventually reveals?

Disgust at the prices drove him home: one painting sold for half a million dollars, while a good year on the farm brought his father thirty thousand.

In The Moon and More, which trade did Clyde hope to study before full classes pushed him into art?

Welding was meant to be his way out of a future on the family farm, but the only places left were in a painting course.

In which Southern city will Daisy, Emaline's best friend in The Moon and More, attend art school?

Savannah is far enough away that her boyfriend plans to break up with her rather than hold her back, before thinking better of it.

Daisy dresses the windows of which Colby boutique, known to Sarah Dessen readers as Auden West's workplace?

Clementine's belongs to Heidi, Auden's stepmother, who gives Daisy free rein over the mannequin displays because they draw in tourists.

At which Colby nightspot does Luke meet up with another woman in The Moon and More?

Tallyho is where he goes with the woman who left him her number, after wrongly deciding Emaline had blown him off for another guy.

At which run-down motel, also seen in What Happened to Goodbye, does Benji's family briefly stay?

The Poseidon is the old, worn-out motel where Mclean, the heroine of that earlier novel, retreats on her own near the end.

Which working title for The Moon and More did Sarah Dessen drop because readers kept misreading it?

The Best After Ever kept being read as The Best Ever After, so it went; Someone Else's Summer was tried next before the first title returned.

Sarah Dessen of The Moon and More lives in Chapel Hill but was born in which Midwestern state?

Illinois, in the city of Evanston, is her birthplace; her parents were both professors, teaching Shakespeare and classics.

Since which school year have Emaline and Luke been a couple when The Moon and More begins?

Ninth grade is when it began, so the pair have been together for four years by the summer before college.

In The Moon and More, which word does Emaline reserve for Rob, leaving the colder 'father' for Joel?

Dad is the name Rob has earned by raising her since she was a toddler; Joel, who drifted away before she was born, gets only the formal word.