Sarah Dessen has a new novel out, and nobody in it needs to bond with a dragon before the romance can begin. Change of Plans, published on May 5, returns to the territory her readers know: a summer that rearranges a young person’s life, complicated family relationships, and feelings that refuse to consult the itinerary.
It is her first novel since The Rest of the Story in 2019. That seven-year gap makes this more than another familiar name appearing on a new-release table. Dessen’s return also opens a useful conversation about which kinds of teenage stories publishers are willing to back.
The dragon joke is tempting. The actual story is more interesting than a fight between readers who like castles and readers who like diners.
A summer that does not follow the plan
According to Simon & Schuster’s description, Finley’s future has largely been organized around her boyfriend, Colin. An unexpected trip with her distant mother takes her to a family vacation home she never knew about, just as that home is being prepared for sale.
Then the relationship she has relied on unravels. Finley meets relatives, finds a new circle around her aunt’s diner, the Egg, and grows close to Ben. The question becomes how to make choices when the person who used to make the plans is no longer at the center of them.
That premise provides plenty of stakes without threatening the continued existence of a kingdom. Losing your assumed future can be a major event even if the rest of the town continues serving breakfast.
Why a bestselling author had to wait
In an April interview with Publishers Weekly, Dessen said she had continued writing during the gap but struggled to sell new projects. She described publishers turning work down and being advised to try romantasy. She chose to keep writing the kind of fiction that suited her.
The interview also explains how the return happened: editor Kendra Levin at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers acquired Change of Plans and two further novels. This was a publisher committing to more of Dessen’s work, rather than Dessen financing a three-book bet herself.
Her experience is revealing because an established readership did not make every new proposal an automatic sale. It is not, by itself, a census of the entire YA market. “This author encountered resistance” is a more useful starting point than “no teenager wants realistic fiction anymore.”
A trend can make a manuscript harder to place without making its potential readers disappear. The awkward gap between those things is where a great deal of publishing frustration lives.
Contemporary fiction has its own scale
It is easy to describe a realistic novel as “small” because its events fit inside a family, a school year, or a summer job. That can make the form sound less demanding than it is. Without a battle arriving to rearrange the plot, conversations and choices have to carry more weight.
For a reader, the appeal may be recognition: an unequal friendship, a parent who feels impossible to reach, the embarrassment of realizing you have agreed to a future you do not actually want. Those situations do not need to be universal to feel specific and convincing.
Fantasy can explore the same emotional territory through invented worlds. Contemporary fiction can approach it through familiar rooms. There is no requirement to choose one shelf and declare war on the other. A person can enjoy an enchanted academy on Tuesday and a difficult family reunion on Wednesday. Both may feature terrible communication.
A return with some visible support
There are concrete signs of attention around the book. Good Morning America featured it as the May selection for its YA Book Club on May 14. That is a specific selection, rather than a vague claim that the book has somehow conquered every reading list.
Kirkus gave the novel a starred review, emphasizing its treatment of growing up, family, friendship, and romance. Readers looking for an early critical perspective can start there; its review includes more plot detail than the outline above.
Neither endorsement settles the future of contemporary YA. They do, however, make the claim that this kind of book has no audience look rather premature. A book does not have to rescue its whole category to give people something they want to read.
Thirty years on, the appeal is still personal
The release falls thirty years after Dessen’s debut, That Summer, in 1996. Some people approaching this new novel will remember finding her books as teenagers. Others will be encountering her work for the first time.
Those readers need not want exactly the same thing. One might be returning for a familiar atmosphere; another may simply recognize something in Finley’s uncertainty. The interesting test is whether the story makes room for them, not whether it resembles the largest current marketing trend.
If you are choosing your next read, the premise offers a straightforward guide: this is a family-and-romance coming-of-age story built around an unexpected summer. And if the books you enjoy tend to blur together afterward, our guide to remembering what you read has practical ways to hold on to the parts that matter to you.
Dessen’s return leaves room for a pleasantly ordinary possibility: people may still want stories about other people trying to work out their lives. The dragon can take the afternoon off.
