The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen

"Luke is the perfect boyfriend: handsome, kind, fun."

Emaline has spent her entire life in Colby, just like her mother. Her family has owned Colby Realty since her grandparents were married fifty years ago. She is the result of a summer romance between her mother and a vacationing boy from the north. He went back home and started college while Emaline's mother had a baby by the time she graduated from high school. Her father and his family initially didn't have anything to do with her. At the age of two, her mother married a young widower with two older daughters of his own and he adopted her. Her father wasn't a part of her life until she contacted him at the age of ten about a family tree project for school. Finally, Emaline had found someone with whom she could talk to about school related things.

Emaline and her boyfriend throughout high school have just graduated. Both of them are going to attend the local university. She has a full scholarship. Her birth father had pushed her for several years to think about attending Ivy League schools. When her acceptance to Columbia comes, she is disappointed when he can no longer pay for her to attend. In Colby, she sees people come and go all summer long putting aside their regular lives to enjoy a vacation and she begins to long for the opportunity to escape her reality. Colby is a small town where people either stay their entire lives or they leave as soon as they can. Everyone expects her to stay in the family business and marry Luke but Emaline dreams some times of leaving the little town for bigger and better things.

When a documentary filmmaker from New York City arrives in Colby for the summer to work on a film, she brings along an intern, Theo. Emaline soon starts to see Theo everywhere she goes and he always goes out of his way to speak to her. Then she gets a phone call from her father that he will be in Colby for the summer to settle his aunt's estate. He wants to meet with her even though she heard nothing from him about her graduation. Her mother is a nervous wreck that Emaline's father will disappoint her daughter like he did her all of those years ago. Soon, both her father and Theo think she is too smart to stay in Colby. Even though she longs for a bright future, Emaline also clings to her loving family and the familiarity of her small town life. All she has ever wanted is the moon and more.

Will Emaline stay in Colby or move away? Why has her father come back to Colby and will he disappoint her again? Will she and Luke stay together? What happens when Theo pulls her into the making of the documentary film? Can Emaline find balance between her life and dreams and achieve the moon and more?