Lynette's Two Cents: REVIEW: What Happened To Goodbye by Sarah Dessen

03 August 2011

REVIEW: What Happened To Goodbye by Sarah Dessen

Posted by Lynette

WHat happened to goodbye

Sarah Dessen

ISBN #: 978-0-670-01294-7

Publisher Name: Penguin Group/Viking

Date Released: May 2011

Genre: Young Adult Romance

Book Format: Print.

BACK COVER BLURB:

ANOTHER TOWN? ANOTHER NEW SCHOOL?

Mclean really doesn’t mind. In fact, she welcomes the chance to try on a new persona. Ever since her parents’ bitter divorce, she and her father have been on the move, leaving the unhappy past behind them. And each move has brought a fresh opportunity for Mclean to reinvent herself. Perky rah-rah girl. Drama mama. All-round joiner.

But here in Lakeview, for the first time she’s putting down roots, making friends, and just trying to be someone she hasn’t been in a long time: herself. Dave has something to do with it. He’s the most real person Mclean’s ever met, and he thinks he’s falling in love with the real Mclean. Mclean doesn’t even know who that is anymore, but she wants to find out – before it’s time to move on again.

COVER SNARK.

Once you read the book, the cover makes perfect sense. I loved it. I also like that you can’t see her face, it makes it feel as if any teen reading it can put herself in the place of the heroine.

FIRST LINES:

The table was sticky, there was a cloudy smudge on my water glass, and we’d been seated for ten minutes with no sign of a waitress. Still, I know what my dad would say. By this point, it was part of the routine.

LYNETTE'S TWO CENTS:

WHAT HAPPENED TO GOODBYE is a compelling story, but all Sarah Dessen’s novels are emotional and compelling and hard to put down. Even if I don’t agree with a character is doing, I completely get the motivation behind why they are doing what they are doing and that is a testament to Ms. Dessen’s storytelling.

In WHAT HAPPENED TO GOODBYE, the heroine Mclean’s parents had a high profile divorce several years ago. Her mother had an affair with the new basketball coach of a top 5 college. Her mother gets pregnant by the guy, divorce’s Mclean’s father and marries the man she had an affair wife. This emotional upheaval tears Mclean’s life apart, the situation is made worse because her mother has never acknowledge what she’s done to tear apart the family. So Mclean decides to pull up stakes and move in with her father, who left his restaurant to take a job with a restaurant conglomerate where he goes to failing restaurants and turn them around aka Gordon Ramsay.

McLean loves the changes because that means she can escape the constant scrutiny she’s been under and just become a different person. Now, she and her father are at a new place and somehow through meeting her neighbors and friends at school she’s stopped becoming a character and has started becoming herself.

SO THERE IS MY CRAPPY PLOT SUMMARY. CAN’T YOU SEE HOW HARD I’M WORKING AT THESE THINGS. YOU KNOW NOW MY PLOT SUMMARYS SUCK BIG ONES.

I loved Mclean. I totally got her. I got how/why she was so lost and felt the need to disappear inside another person. This was so me as a teenager, except I disappeared inside books. Mclean’s character arc and growing into herself was beautifully layered into the story.

WHAT HAPPENED TO GOODBYE is exquisitely written, and while Mclean was an awesome fully developed character, WHAT HAPPENED TO GOODBYE left me feeling as if I missed something. I am fully aware that if this was a novel written by someone else, I would’ve given it an A, but because it’s Sarah Dessen I was expecting more.

Yes, I am a hypocrite.

What I felt was missing in WHAT HAPPENED TO GOODBYE was the connection between Mclean and Dave. Dave charecter was lacking compared to her other hereos. Dave’s interactions with Mclean were lacking the emotional punch that ‘m used to seeing with Ms. Dessen. Her heroes are usually drool worthy and I don’t feel that she lived up to the great potential as she could’ve with Dave. I was so focused on Mclean’s journey that I didn’t really care about Dave. And who doesn’t care about the hero?

Having said that, I still believe that WHAT HAPPENED TO GOODBYE is a novel that is worth the purchase price just for Mclean, she’s an awesome character and I loved her.

WHERE PURCHASED:

Borrowed from my local library.

RATING: