{Review} What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen

Friday, January 12, 2018

{Review} What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen

What Happened to Goodbye
by Sarah Dessen
Pages: 402
Release Date: April 9, 2013 (this edition)
by Speak (an imprint of Penguin)

Goodreads / Purchase

A new day. A new place. A new life. In the past few years, McLean has pretended to be so many different people that she hardly remembers who she really is anymore. The adorable guy next door might be able to help her figure it out. But is she ready for it?

These types of books were way more enjoyable 5 years ago when I was a youngin who still had hope of finding my boy next door. Now, about to breach 20 and still painfully single, I am bitter.

Sarah Dessen is a goddess with a keyboard. Her writing style is so effortless and smooth, it isn’t hard to get sucked into her novels. She uses beautiful prose and seems to end every chapter with some simple yet deep analogy that is profound and groundbreaking. I enjoyed how there were jumps between present and past, kind of like a recap that showed the steps of how McLean got to where she was at that moment. They were kind of like switchback turns on a windy road, and they were sprinkled in throughout the book, but didn’t disrupt the flow, which is a testament to how good of a writer Dessen is. She has perfected the trick of developing characters and their pasts at a perfect pace, and then easing into a deeper connection. It really is beautiful how elegantly and effortlessly Dessen gives us the past of McLean, not all at once, but over the course of the entire book. It wasn’t boring, it wasn’t dumped on us all at once, it was a steady stream of backstory that made McLean an incredibly relatable character. I’m happy the book ended the way it did, and I can’t really call bullshit on how it worked out, because none of it seemed too perfect or out of character. Dessen kept the fairtytale ending realistic, which is harder than it sounds. All in all, a very enjoyable book.