A review by lastingliterature
Goodbye Days by Jeff Zentner

emotional hopeful reflective sad

4.5

 “Sometimes, though, you want to remember every minute you spent with someone. You want to remember even the most mundane moments. You wish you had inhabited them more completely, and marked them with yourself more indelibly - not in spite of their ordinariness, but because of it. But you only discover this when it's too late” 

 

I have no excuse for not reading this book before now. I adore Zentner books, and he is one of my top authors I recommend to others. I’ve even had this book on my self for years, both at home and in my classroom! 

 

I do think, though, that I might have subconsciously stayed away from this one. This was published a couple of years after my best friend passed away. And still, today, her death still feels like a bruise on my heart. Much of what Carver feels still hits a decade later after my loss. 

 

As you can tell, this book is sad. While there are moments of levity, much of the story is Carver’s deep sense of guilt while everyone around him seems to blame him. Which leads to my one big gripe with this novel: the blame!! While grief can make anyone a bit crazy, I do find it hard to believe this many people would blame Carver for the accident. No one in the story ever placed any blame on Mars himself for opening a text and responding while driving. That bothered me. 

 

Otherwise, this is a great novel, and I cried twice. 

 

4.5⭐