Before I begin, I suppose it's noteworthy that these are not the types of books I normally read. I don't read a whole lot, but not because I don't love books-I do-but because I don't normally have that extra time. Work, school, two year old, television (I mean.....no wait, yeah, television), the works. However, when my phone is acting up and I need something to glance through on my lunch breaks, I grab a book. My pick is Stephen King, books of suspense and horror and pure awesomeness. BUT, when I want something real easy and painfully simple to follow, I generally grab something like Nicholas Sparks or in this case, Sarah Dessen. (I never, however, resort to Stephanie Meyers. Don't get me started.)
This book, What Happened To Goodbye, was probably the most predictable, unrealistic, silly book I've ever read with the exception of the Dr Seuss or Shel Silverstein books I read to my son.
In a nutshell, a girl named Mclean (no, I'm not kidding) lives with her father - post nasty divorce and cheating wife scandal - who works for a food company that keeps him traveling constantly. Mclean doesn't mind considering every new school she attends (four in two years) she can reinvent herself and be someone totally new. She changes her name, her likes, her tastes, her clothes, everything. Can you guess where this is going? She moves somewhere she likes, makes REAL friends, falls in love, blahblahblah.
I don't want to say the book is bad, but I'm gonna anyway. This book really sucked. I only kept reading it because I don't like to not finish something I started. It was also a light read and made for something much more simple than my annoying, complicated, and hectic life, so I guess that was the appeal for me. The biggest issue I had was that it took this author 402 pages to tell a story that could have been told in about twenty. There was so much unnecessary filler in this monster that I would skip several pages at a time of repeated flashbacks or "deep" thoughts and still not be behind or confused in the slightest.
The story is sweet enough, I guess. However, the "love story" between Mclean and genius Dave is dragged out so horribly that you sort of start to believe it's never going to pan out. You even eventually start to hope it doesn't, because you tend to love the character of Dave. Smart, sweet, good looking, basically perfect, and you don't like Mclean as much. She's way too serious and you wanna rip the pages in half several times because she's so frustratingly fake and silent and pulls Dave along like a little child on a wagon. There is no character definition for her, which in a way is the point, since it's all about her finding herself and figuring out how to love whoever she ends up being. In other words, she's incredibly boring throughout the entire book. She goes over the same flashback memories and butterfly belly feelings so many times that you can literally predict the upcoming paragraph before you've finished the one you're on.
For a work of fiction that is supposed to reflect the life of a real teenager in high school, this book is so unrealistic it makes me feel a little bit like I'm reading a fantasy novel. The characters just don't exist in high school. Everyone except Mclean is so specific and detailed and stereotypical that I came to the conclusion that Mrs. Dessen had been criticized in the past for not giving enough depth to her characters that Goodbye fell victim to the author redeeming herself. From Deb, the obnoxiously cheerful "Welcome to Jackson High" committee president who - GASP - is ignored for being a nerd but brought into the "cool" group and turns out to be a drummer and loves tattoos, to Opal, the eccentric restaurant owner who is covered in tattoos and wears funky and over the top outfits (which we got extremely fine tuned details of) daily and smokes cigarettes like a chimney and swears like a sailor, each character is annoyingly defined and turned into someone who, as previously stated, just doesn't exist.
I have read more than one Dessen book, and they're basically all the same. Boring new girl meets exciting and mysterious new boy who flips her life upside down and turns her into....someone not boring. All this being said, if a fourteen year old picks up this book, she's gonna like it more than I did. Even then though, a pre-teen could probably still tell you that there is too much "in between" gunk. Too much we could have done without. Too many repeats, too many irritating moments. Too much filler.
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