What Happened to Goodbye

What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen

What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen. Speak Publications, New York City, 2013. ISBN: 978-0142423837

Summary

For the past two years, Mclean has been moving around the country with her dad. He’s a restaurant consultant and offers business and retail advice to struggling small town restaurants. Once the restaurants succeed on their own, Mclean and her dad move on. Which is fine with Mclean: she never liked making or keeping friends anyway. In each town they’ve been in, Mclean has changed who she is: one time she was overachiever and popular Beth, another time she was dramatic and theatric Lizbet.  All of the people Mclean has left behind never even knew who she really was.

Mclean is planning on being yet another person while she’s in Lakeview. But when she introduces herself by her real name, she wonders if being herself is okay. Her new friends seem to like her already, and Dave, the cute boy next door, seems to like her for who she is.  But Mclean knows better than to get close to people: because goodbye could happen tomorrow.

Critical Evaluation

The realistic and quirky characters are what make What Happened to Goodbye so strong. From Mclean’s family, to her new friends, to the kitchen staff that works at the restaurant, all of the characters stand out in their own way. While some are more emotional and others add humor to the story, the supporting characters all aid in Mclean’s journey to finding herself.  Character growth is also a big part of the novel, with both the main and the supporting characters changing and adapting to each other’s needs. One example is Deb, an odd, overachiever classmate of Mclean’s.  While she first comes across as strange and needy, her emotional back story and quirks are seen as endearing and needed by the novel’s end.

Teens will also be able to relate to Mclean’s family struggles, and her quest of trying to find out who she the real Mclean is.  As in her other novels, Dessen’s creative characters and easy writing style make What Happened to Goodbye an enjoyable read.

Reader’s Annotation

After years of pretending to be somebody else, is Mclean ready to be herself?

About the Author

 “Hi. I’m Sarah. Writing a bio is always a little weird, if only because it seems completely self-absorbed. I have a standard one that I send out, which lists where I got my degree, the names of my books, all the same boring basic facts. But for this website, I’m supposed to do something more, give a sense of who I really am. So here goes. I was born in 1970 in Illinois, but all the life I remember I’ve spent in Chapel Hill, NC. My parents were both professors at the University
of North Carolina: my mom is a classicist (which means she knows everything you could ever imagine about myths, Latin, and words) and my dad teaches Shakespeare (which means I’d seen As You Like It about five times by the age of 18.)

I’ve been writing, in one way or another, for as long as I can remember. I was always a big reader, mostly because my parents were. I used to get frustrated with my mom because she bought me books for Christmas when what I really wanted were the gift my friends got, things like sweaters and jewelry. But I did love to read. When I was eight or nine my parents gave me an old manual typewriter and a little desk in the corner of our den, and I’d sit there and type up my stories. I was the kind of kid that people always sighed over and said, “She has such a wild imagination,” which usually meant “I wish Sarah would try to stick to the truth.” I have a tendency to embellish: I think it’s just a weakness of fiction writers. Once you learn how to make a story better, it’s hard not to do it all the time.”

 (Bio/Press Kit.    Retrieved September 19^th, 2014 from http://sarahdessen.com/press-kit/)

Genres

Contemporary

Coming of Age

Curriculum Ties

N/A

Booktalking Ideas

1: How does Mclean cope with moving around?

2: Mclean’s family: good example of a divorced family or not?

Reading Level/Interest Age

Ages 14+

Grades 9+

Challenge Issues

N/A

Why included?

I included What Happened to Goodbye because of the strong and quirky characters and the ‘summer reading’ feel of the novel.