howifeelaboutbooks 's review for:

What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen

4.0

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I loved the plotlines of this book. One was of Mclean's father's restaurant business - always busy, and always delicious-sounding. Another was the family drama of her mother's affair, parents' divorce, mother's remarriage and the introduction of twin half-siblings. The one plot that fell flat for me was, strangely, the main story of Mclean's school life and the friendships she made after moving to a new town. Most of her friends seemed a little bland to me (with the exception of Deb, whom I loved), and it was hard to keep them straight - also to differentiate them from characters from Dessen's previous books. Nothing major really happened in the book, but that worked for me - it seemed more about character development than drama. Also, I personally liked that there was no real romance, as there usually is in Dessen's books. The relationship between Mclean and Dave was very slow-going, and it was hard to tell if there actually was anything going on. I liked this, though. It seemed very real, where often the relationships in her books seem too unbelievably dramatic and "high school." Overall, I thought it was strange that the most interesting characters were the adults, since it's a young adult book, but I loved the introspection, and there are some amazingly moving lines I had to make note of.