what happened to goodbye

I was in need of some very light easy summer reading this week so I went to my awesome local library and checked out a few newly published young adult books. Ahhh there is nothing better than teen love stories right?

What happened to Goodbye was supposed to be about a high school girl who moves around a lot with her father changing her name and identity with each move until she hits one town and she can't help be be herself...but at this point she isn't sure who that is anymore...until she meets the good looking neighbor boy who helps her figure it out. A love story AND a self discovery story. What can be better? Oh lets see, as it turns out this girl (Mclean) is a senior in high school her parents had gotten a divorce several earlier because the mom cheated and left the dad (awful). So the story was really about this poor girls struggle to deal with such a terrible divorce and a mom who wouldn't admit fault at all.

It was an nice story, I think I enjoyed the writing more than the actually story though. My favorite parts were when the narrator (Mclean) would mention that her knee bumped into the cute neighbor boy on the car ride and neither one moved their knee, or their hands touched but just a little, or his arm brushed her in the hall. squeal and giggle. I loved those parts the author put in there because it is so true to a girls thinking...so funny how excited a girl will get about something that a boy is probably not even thinking about. There were also times it was a little bit random, she would be in one moment and then the next paragraph should would be telling a memory from her past and then BAM just like that she is back in the moment. At first it was annoying, but then I realized that it is true to how a teenage girl, or any girl for that matter, is going to think and talk. So it seemed fitting.

This is a story about a girl figuring out who she is and where she really belongs, she is trying to forgive her mother for being selfish and leaving the family she made to create a new family. It is about making friends and sticking around to support each other. It was a nice story...nothing amazing or life changing, but an easy read with more to it than just a love story-in fact it is a very little love story but a HUGE emotional story.

Favorite quote: "I mean, it's not surprising really. Once you love something, you always love it in some way. You have to. It's, like, part of you for good" AND But in the real world, you couldn't really just split a family down the middle, mom on one side, dad the other, with the child divided equally between. It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again. It was what you couldn't see, those tiniest of pieces, that we lost in the severing, and their absence kept everything from being complete.

GRADE: C