Author Sarah Dessen Recalls Working with 'So Advanced for Her Age' Mandy Moore on 2003's “How to Deal ”(Exclusive)

After working with Mandy Moore on 'How to Deal' more than 20 years ago, Sarah Dessen tells PEOPLE she'd love to team up with the actress again for another project

Author Sarah Dessen has fond memories of working with Mandy Moore on How to Deal.

Speaking exclusively with PEOPLE, the North Carolina-based author recalls working with the actress, 40, on one of her first films, How to Deal, which was based on Dessen’s two novels That Summer and Someone Like You.

“We were so lucky to get Mandy Moore when she was just starting out her career,” Dessen says of Moore’s role in the 2003 film.

Dessen recalls meeting the young actress and singer for the first time in Toronto as she visited the film's set, noting that she was “so advanced for her age.”

“She was really carrying that movie by herself,” she adds. “And she was so down to earth. She worked very, very hard. And I just remember being in awe of these long days that they were doing and how she was just able to just keep up with it and do it and have such a good head on her shoulders.”

Related: From 'Crush' to 'Candy,' Here Are the 11 Best Mandy Moore Throwback Songs

She recalls that before the film’s premiere, the books did a tie-in with the movie, featuring Moore on the cover, which she jokes helped boost sales.

“It never hurts to have Mandy Moore on the cover of your book,” she quips. “So the book was best-selling before the movie even came out. I remember being at the premiere with her and she said, ‘Oh, I heard the book's a bestseller. Congratulations.’ And I said, ‘Oh, it's because you're on the cover.’ ”

She adds that as her book Along for the Ride was adapted for Netflix, she got many responses from fans hoping to see Moore as one of the moms.

“I think that would [have been] so fun to do that, to have her now that she's a mom herself,” she says, adding that it’s been a full-circle experience watching Moore step into the role of mom, both onscreen with roles like This Is Us and offscreen as she has welcomed three children with husband Taylor Goldsmith.

“I definitely felt very emotional when I see her having kids of her own because that's sort of a crazy thing to see her moving into that mom role in real life and then also on This Is Us in pop culture as well,” she says.

Though she wasn't able to team up with Moore for Along for the Ride, she adds that she would "love" to have her play a mother in one of her other projects. After Netflix decided not to move forward with her other adaptations in 2023, she says she is "actively" optioning out other novels, including 2002's This Lullaby, which has a script.

"That was done before Netflix decided to move forward so I'm ever hopeful," she continues. "You just never know with the market. But I just keep my fingers crossed always."

Related: Remember When Mandy Moore Opened for *NSYNC? Her First Teen PEOPLE Feature Will Take You Back

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More than 20 years after its initial release, Dessen adds that she loves “the following that How to Deal still has” today. “It wasn't a movie that hugely led at the box office or anything like that, but I just have people come talk to me about it all the time,” she says. “I think it sort of struck a nerve in a certain way with a certain generation of people that I still hear from. So it's a great thing. Every once in a while I'll see it's on TV and I'm just like, ‘Oh my gosh, there it is again.’ ”

She adds that she thinks it still resonates deeply with people today as it focused on the “perennial issues” teenagers still go through.

“I think that's why YA continues to be popular and continues to appeal,” she adds. “It's because these things don't change. The technology changes, the pop culture changes, the slang changes, but the idea of being a teenager and having all these firsts come at you at the same time and trying to navigate all of that is very much the same whether you're growing up when I was growing up or now.”

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