'If music be the food of love, play on.'

So, despite my best intentions of getting some sleep last night, I actually stayed up till one o'clock so I could finish Just Listen. Outside of Sarra Manning, not much of this teen-drama-fiction stays in my head, so I was surprised how much this book drew me straight back in and was even better than I remembered. When I finally turned out the light, I felt raw and there were tears in my eyes, which is unusual for a 'oh dear everyone hates me, oh look I'll fall in love with a boy I never looked at before' kind of story.

Despite Owen's uncanny resemblance to a boy I know at school, Dessen has a talent for writing just the kind of romantic scenes that make you gasp and butterflies appear in your stomach. There's barely any actual 'romance' in Just Listen, just a couple of kissing scenes, but none of it is trite, not even the larger proportion of girl-getting-changed-by-boy. The threads of music connecting everything in the book - even though I've never heard any of it - left me reflecting on the various music which has been the soundtrack to my life so far.

I mean, I only have to listen to the first few bars of 'Dance, Dance' or 'I Write Sins Not Tragedies' to be taken back to a 14 year old with badly applied eyeliner and poker straight hair, sitting in front of my stereo discovering how Patrick Stump and Brendan Urie were singing words I didn't even know I wanted to say. 'Beating Hearts Baby' by Head Automatica will always send me back to sitting on a bus with my best friend in Portsmouth, tying knots in strawberry laces with our tongues. 'Thnks fr th Mmrs' and 'The Sharpest Lives' take me to a hot coach somewhere between Rome and Pisa, writing my journal and looking for spaghetti trees. Something Corporate's 'Fall' takes me back to breaking up with my first boyfriend, and when 'A Comet Appears' starts with its deliciously swirly melody, I'm kissing a tall boy in the rain, under the arch of the cathedral in Wells. Pitbull's 'Calle Ocho' is me and my best friend dancing wildly and carefree at a school party; 'I Wanna Do Your Makeup' by Scotty Vanity is getting ready for a toga party last summer; 'Machines' (Biffy Clyro) is for all the times I've ever been depressed.

And Just Listen made me think, at one in the morning, of all of this, and I got my iPod out, and fell asleep to my soundtrack.