A review by jayistired
He Forgot to Say Goodbye by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

4.0

This is probably not my favorite book written by Benjamin but I would like to say that I see him. I see him between those lines and I see where he came from, or actually where his new stories come from.

One of the problems I had with this book was the repetition of some words, There are some specific sentences that Benjamin really likes to use and they are like his signature and he uses them basically in all of his works, those are not the problem. The problem were some words that these kids repeated over and over again like ‘destroy, effen,etc..’, which I got used to, not a big deal.

The story was pretty similar to his other works though, I feel like his other book, ‘the inexplicable logic of my life’ is a better version of this one and I see that he has improved a lot which made me appreciate this book too, this book is one of the reasons that he has improved after all.
We are not perfect and we improve, that’s what I learned but this seriously could’ve been a better book. He knows all about character development now but unfortunately this book kinda disappointed me. I felt like it was going really slowly but at the end it was kinda rushed, I didn’t get how they formed a friendship, it was sudden and their changes seemed kinda forced which was the exact opposite of how I felt and what I liked about his other books and characters.

I’m glad that I’ve read it though, fun to read.

I’ll give it a 3.5 of 5. (I feel bad about this but I need to be honest even when it comes to Benjamin. Sorry Benjamin, I love your books and your words, they mean a lot to me.)