Goodbye Days

Goodbye Days is the wonderful sophomore novel from the talented Morris Award-winning author, Jeff Zentner. In Goodbye Days, Carver Briggs has lost his three best friends in a tragic accident. Carver’s grief (and guilt) is palpable on every page and Zentner’s exploration of it is poignant and heartfelt. But underneath all the grief, tucked within the beautiful words, is the thread of hope. And that is what makes this a novel to savor. Its story and characters will stay with you long after turning the final page. Do not miss it.

This is a darkly powerful book. There are so many issues going on, it's a treat to have Mr. Zentner parse them all out for us.
Guilt and causation go hand in hand for Carver. His role in the tragedy is broken down and explained deftly by various characters, but none more impactful than Dr. Mendez and Carver himself. It was critical to Carver's will to persevere.
Every Goodbye day gutted me and yet gave me optimum hope. I imagine the "hello" story to be epic.
You are a go-to, no-questions-asked author for me, Jeff Zentner.

Carver's three best friends, Mars, Eli, and Blane, die in a car crash. In the wreckage, Mars' phone is found replying to a text from Carver, and Carver can't stop blaming himself. Neither can Mars' Judge father, whose influence opens a criminal investigation against Carver. Carver finds himself ostracized at his high school and suffering from panic attacks. His only allies outside of family are Eli's girlfriend who needs support herself, and Blane's grandmother who requests that Carver have a "goodbye day" with her.

This "goodbye day" would be a day where she and Carver do all the favorite things that she did with Blane, to find closure. Unexpectedly, Eli's parents, and later Mars' father, ask for a goodbye day, as well, but their motives might be different.

Carver faces deep emotional turmoil as he examines his role in the accident, and tries to come to grips with his grief.

Goodbye Days is written for a Young Adult audience, with the intention of providing a realistic example of dealing with grief. Zentner does this well. He also does an excellent job portraying the depth of grief, panic attacks, and the different reactions that grief can cause. His writing is strong, his characters lifelike, and the plot believable.

That being said, I must confess that I had no connection with any of the characters in the story. I didn't find Carver's memories of his friends funny or touching, nor did I become emotionally invested in his grief. Furthermore, I found the descriptions of the goodbye days to be off-putting and slightly creepy.

I have read other reviews of this book on Goodreads, and I know that my reaction is the atypical one, so I'll stress that this review, as is any review, is simply my personal opinion.

From Jeff Zentner, who writes about grief as if it were his own, Goodbye Days is a beautiful book, fraught with emotion.

I wish there had been more insight into the individual personalities. I didn’t feel as though I really knew Mars, Eli and Blake. In particular, I would like to have had the chance to understand Adair’s perspective, to get to know her and her relationship with her brother.

In essence, this is a book that should be on the shelf in all high school libraries and brought to the attention of healthcare providers offering grief counseling.
@crushingcinders
*Review copy*

OMG! I just finished listening to the Audio version (read by Michael Crouch) that I checked out from the Anchorage Public Library (Listen Alaska)!!! It is WONDERFUL!!! It made me Laugh, Cry and really THINK about many issues that all of us go through in LIFE. I cannot recommend it highly enough... for everyone to read or listen to!

Evocative, heartbreaking, and beautifully written, Zentner's book is packed with strong emotions and memorable characters for a story that'll stay with you long after you finish reading.

Carver Briggs blames himself for the text message that killed his three best friends in a crash. While dealing with the guilt and anxiety of it all, he attempts to navigate his senior year and his own grief. When one of his best friends' grandmother suggests remembering his friend's life with a "goodbye day," Carver uses the concept to try to remember, heal, and forgive.

I knew after reading Jeff Zentner's The Serpent King, that I would love Goodbye Days. He writes with such sensitivity and wit, and tackles intense issues with grace. Goodbye Days is heartbreaking in its premise -- a young man who unwittingly contributes to the deaths of his three best friends when he texts the driver of the car they are travelling in. We follow Carver Briggs as he wrestles with guilt and grief, and we feel every ounce of his emotion.
What sets this book apart and elevates it is the hope it inspires, even at the darkest times. There is healing here. It's not unrealistic or fairy-tale healing -- it feels real and raw and imperfect and difficult...just like real healing and real hurt.
I highly recommend this novel, with the one caveat that you should have a box of tissues on hand, because the little moments in this book will sneak up on you and break your heart in the best possible way.

This was my favorite book of 2017. Holy shoot. This book was incredible. Raw. Gut wrenching. Heartbreaking. Emotional. I loved every minute of it. The writing was beautiful and I highlighted practically the whole book. Jeez.

After loving Jeff Zentner's The Serpent King, I was eager to read Goodbye Days. Zentner doesn't disappoint.

Our narrator, Carver Briggs, is enduring the unthinkable - his three best friends died in a car crash and he blames himself. The reader follows Carver as he suffers through not just his own grief, but is overwhelmed by the grief of the families forever changed by that night.

This book was brutal and beautiful and true. The writing at times so poetic that I had to put my Kindle down and then re-read the words.

It’s Monday Morning right now. I finished this book over a day and a half ago, but I haven’t been able to organise my thoughts about it, and so I just decided to pour them all out onto my review

· Goodbye Days was EASILY one of my most anticipated reads of the year. I ADORED Jeff Zentner’s The Serpent King and all the heart break and hope it made me feel, and I was so excited for what he would do with Goodbye Days.

· That being said, I REALLY REALLY wanted to enjoy Goodbye Days. I think Jeff is an AMAZING person, I love his writing style and this book IS THE PERFECT SET-UP FOR HEARTBREAK.

· I lost a friend recently. We weren’t ‘best’ friends by any means, but we were friends, and his death was so senseless and so reckless and it just shocked me that life could end that easily, and I really wanted to feel something with this book as the protagonist loses his THREE best friends.

· Goodbye Days WAS NOT what I thought it would be. For starters, I didn’t once FEEL that overwhelming grief that I wanted to feel, and that I felt when I heard the news about my friend. The book fell TOTALLY flat in this aspect, and more than feeling the grief, the main focus of this was getting back to ‘normal.’ It’s just how I felt – maybe not AS much with Carver, but definitely with Jesmyn.

· Another thing I couldn’t wrap my head around was Carver and his dead best friend’s girlfriend – Jesmyn. I would have liked them as friends, I REALLY WOULD HAVE, but I KNEW that he was developing feelings for her, and this feeling or wrongness settled around me that I couldn’t shake. I liked that they hung out, I LOVED that they had each other for support but it still felt all sorts of wrong to me.

· I did LOVE two very specific characters in the book – Nana Betsy and Georgia. Nana Betsy was honest and good and kind of an awesome grandmother (I went and gave mine a long hug after) and I FELT HER PAIN. More than anything else, I FELT HER PAIN. It felt like the pain I expected from Carver, but didn’t get. Georgia is Carver’s older sister and she too is all kinds of awesome. They made the book a whole lot better.

· I also wish we had MORE of The Sauce Crew flashbacks, and less Jesmyn and Carver (The Sweat Crew) because I feel like even AFTER the Goodbye Days for each of them, that I BARELY KNEW THEM, And HOW DO I FEEL SAD FOR PEOPLE I DON’T KNOW?

· Did I cry? YES. Big fat tears. This was a GOOD BOOK. It was highly emotional (and brought back memories from four months ago when my friend died) and DEFINITELY a good story, that I KNOW could have been better,

I would recommend Goodbye Days – it’s a thought provoking read, but not as much as I would shove The Serpent King into your arms and faces. 3 stars.

A searing and poignant story about friendship and how we grieve. This will appeal to a high school audience. The characters are extremely well developed. The pace is a little slower than I anticipated, but by the end I was savoring the time I had left with Blade and his friends. Highly recommend!

This book is so beautifully written. It has wonderful literary prose as well as charming characters that feel like real teenage boys, fart jokes and all. I loved Carver, the main character, and his emotional journey through this story felt true and important. I loved this even more than The Serpent King, which was one of my favorite books from last year.

This is a very good story with lots of psychological issues, all well written and clear. No firm conclusions are reached for the main character, but his journey is most fascinating to read. Definitely thought provoking too.

Review
Goodbye days is a novel that starts slow with a story that gets weirder through the first chapters. A circle of friends that through an accident becomes just one of them.

This is a slow paced story, Zentner wants you to get the feeling that you're there, and there's not only enough descriptions about surroundings to make you feel that, but also the emotional environment that encapsulates the inner thoughts of the protagonist.

Conclusion
Not a story for everyone. If you like contemporary novels, then Goodbye Days is for you.

Reading this book was a full experience. It engaged my emotions, my senses, my imagination... The writing is just stunningly beautiful. There are so many gorgeous lines I want to paint across a canvas or tattoo on my skin, my heart. I'm honestly at a loss for words other than READ THIS.

I moderately liked Zentner's debut - "The Serpent King" - for its rare in YA religious ministry. I found "Goodbye Days" to be less interesting, less compelling, and significantly harder to read. Didn't finish.

In comparison to the author's first book this one was a big disappointment to me. The last 25%, or so, was brilliant but that doesn't dismiss the rest of the story's problems. It was almost like he was trying too hard to make the book hip, and ended up making a lot of it read like a paperback romance novel filled with cliché and corn.

Then there was that one element in the story which was outright ridiculous. How it was left in the book after edits is beyond me. It wasn't even needed because the MC had enough inner turmoil to add a dramatic edge to the story without it.

I was provided with a digital review copy in return for an honest review.