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lizbizfizz 's review for:
What Happened to Goodbye
by Sarah Dessen
I love Sarah Dessen and I enjoyed this book, although I don't think it's going to the top of my favorites list.
Mclean is a teenage girl whose parents have recently divorced, and she has spent the last year or two moving around a lot with her father. Each new place gives her the opportunity to reinvent herself; she even chooses different names to go with each version. At the beginning of the book they are arriving in a new place where she may just end up being herself for the first time since the divorce.
This book doesn't contain a lot of action--it's mostly about character and emotion instead of plot. Mclean obviously hasn't dealt with her parents' divorce in any meaningful way, and I enjoyed reading about her journey in that sense. I also appreciated that the romance side plot was minimized and the story was mostly about Mclean discovering her independence apart from love.
I never felt all that invested in Mclean as a character, though. I'm sure this book would be great for anyone with divorced parents, but it just didn't resonate much with me. Also, this is a minor quibble, but Dessen sometimes goes out into left field with her protagonist's names-- Mclean, really? I don't like it.
Mclean is a teenage girl whose parents have recently divorced, and she has spent the last year or two moving around a lot with her father. Each new place gives her the opportunity to reinvent herself; she even chooses different names to go with each version. At the beginning of the book they are arriving in a new place where she may just end up being herself for the first time since the divorce.
This book doesn't contain a lot of action--it's mostly about character and emotion instead of plot. Mclean obviously hasn't dealt with her parents' divorce in any meaningful way, and I enjoyed reading about her journey in that sense. I also appreciated that the romance side plot was minimized and the story was mostly about Mclean discovering her independence apart from love.
I never felt all that invested in Mclean as a character, though. I'm sure this book would be great for anyone with divorced parents, but it just didn't resonate much with me. Also, this is a minor quibble, but Dessen sometimes goes out into left field with her protagonist's names-- Mclean, really? I don't like it.