I’m not sure that anything I say can do justice to this poignant and heart-breaking book. I’ll assume you’ve already read the synopsis. So you’re probably wondering, “Will this book make me cry?” Yes. Yes it will. Will it have you ugly sobbing for pages on end? Probably. Will it take you on a beautiful, heartfelt journey that explores grief, loss, and learning to live when those you live aren’t living? YES.

When Carver finds out that his three best friends were killed in a car accident that may have been caused because the driver was responding to a text he sent them, his whole world crumbles. What would you do if you lost three of the most important people in your life in one go? What more, how would you deal with the overwhelming sense that it’s your fault for sending the text they may have killed them? How do you learn to live when all you feel is guilt and sorrow?

These are some of the very difficult questions that Jeff Zentner addresses in Goodbye Days. At first, I had a huge problem with the premise of this book. Like, how the heck is it Carter’s fault that his friend chose to text while driving? But once I started reading it, everything came together and I felt like I was stepping into Carver’s shoes, which allowed me to really see things from his point of view. Once that happened, I found myself being drawn deeper and deeper into the story, and by the end everything made perfect sense to me.

There are definitely moments of this book where I wanted to throw it across the room because a character was doing something I felt was just freaking ridiculous - How could Carver’s friends’ parents treat him that way? I mean, he was BEST FRIENDS with their sons? How is this even possible that they would want to prosecute him for an accident?!?! What the heck?? Thoughts like that. But at the same time, nothing in this book feels unrealistic. The characters do some crazy things, but, then again, grief makes you crazy. By the end, I felt for every single one of them, even the people I didn’t really like in the beginning.

In short, I devoured this book, and it left me aching and hungry for more. You will never look at texting and driving the same way again. Goodbye Days changed my life. I will seriously never forget this book or the lessons I learned from it. Carver’s struggle was my struggle. I was there with him, feeling what he felt and experiencing what he experienced. I cried with him. I laughed with him. I tried to look towards a brighter future with him. And somehow, just somehow, we both managed to find one.

Rating: 5+/5 stars

Reasons to Read Goodbye Days by Jeff Zentner.

1. Because the Sauce Crew. You have to know them.
2. To find out why there is a text message ellipsis on the cover.
3. There are several references to a character from The Serpent King.
4. To truly understand the magic of a squirrel rodeo.
5. The scene where Nana Betsy uses a whoopee cushion in a craft store to make fart noises.
6. Because Carver gets what it's like to experience true anxiety and panic attacks.
7. Not every character has awesome parents. Some of them suck. And that's life for so many.
8. This quote: "Tears stream down my wrists and dampen my shirt cuffs. They dribble onto the blue carpet with white flecks. I think for a second about all the places I've made a small part of me. Maybe after I'm dead, they can cut up the carpet and extract my DNA from my tears that have soaked into the carpet and resurrect me. Maybe that's what the resurrection will be."
9. And this one: "I've just roundly boned myself. And it's bizzarrely satisfying. Like peeling off a scab. Sticking a Q-tip too far into your ear. That inexplicable desire to jump off high places or swerve into oncoming traffic. Weird how we're programmed to get pleasure from destroying ourselves."
10. Because Jeff Zentner write like this: "My parents sit at the kitched table having coffee and cereal when I stumble in. They look at me as though I told them I have an invisible friend who tells me to collect knives and save pee in jars." I love it!

After reading The Serpent King and Goodbye Days, Jeff Zenter has become one of my favorite YA authors. His characters' stories appeal to a diverse audience and are timeless. I will continue to recommend his books to my students and friends alike.

Thank you so much to Penguin Random House and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book, as always, all opinions are my own.

This was my first Zentner novel and it was absolutely phenomenal, I adored it!

The story follows Carver in the wake of his three best friends' deaths - they were recently killed after plowing into the back of a semi-truck. The driver, Mars, was texting at the time, which many believe to be a main cause of the accident. But he is texting Carver back, they find a half written response to his asking where they were. So not only does Carver feel grief for his friends, but also guilt for his part in their deaths. To make matters worse, Mars's dad is thinking about taking legal action and holding Carver officially responsible for the accident. The story goes on to show Carver's journey through guilt, panic attacks, and acceptance. He also goes on a "goodbye day" with one of his friend's grandmother, providing her with closure and "one last day."

As I mentioned, this was my first Zentner, so I didn't really know what to expect, but I think he did a great job.

One of the major elements of the book is Carver's grief and I think it was done really well. There is no right way to grieve, but I think Carver is portrayed accurately and very well in terms of emotions. The writing is so well done that I felt like there was a weight on my chest while I was reading the book, I could feel Carver's grief and guilt throughout the story myself.

This is also an amazingly diverse book: there are people of colour, Mars is African-American and Eli's girlfriend, Jesmyn, is adopted from the Philipines, one of the friends is gay, Jesmyn also has synesthesia (basically the ability to hear colours), and Carver suffers from anxiety and panic attacks as a result of the accident. The story also looks at non-traditional families, Blake is taken in by his grandmother after his mother had him as a teenager and gave up on him, as well as families with higher and lower incomes. And the best part was that these details were a part of the story but in a way that doesn't make them just another plot point. The diversity is woven in seamlessly and perfectly.

I also really appreciated the relationship between Jesmyn and Carver. There were times when they experienced survivors guilt, and other times it was unclear if there was something more between them. But their relationship was handled really well, both respectful to Eli, but also not treating Jesmyn like a possession that should be willed to whichever friend was left.

The chapters of the book were filled with flashbacks to other milestones in the boys' lives, the first day of school, etc. and I thought these were really great additions. You get to learn more and more about Mars, Blake, and Eli, and the more you learn, the more you grieve their absence. Zentner does a great job of creating characters that, despite not even being alive during the main story, are well rounded and give the reader a good sense of who they were.

This book is more than just the goodbye days - although, don't get me wrong, those were emotional. It's about moving on after a horrific accident. Not taking a second for granted because you never know when your last one will be. This book was hard to get through some of the time and the parts that were a little lighter, I still felt drained.

I really loved the male perspective as well, especially coming from a book with such emotional depth. We don't see a lot of male POVs and I loved Carver's voice.

Overall, I devoured this one in less than a day and cannot recommend it enough!

GOODBYE DAYS by Jeff Zentner (March 7, Crown) deals with grief, loss, guilt, death and high school friendships. This title definitely falls into the realistic fiction category as the main character, Carver, copes with his friends' deaths due to texting while driving. And, coincidentally, distracted driving was the cover story for last week's Upfront Magazine which is written for high school students.

Of course, Carver is sad to have lost Sauce Crew, his 3 best friends (Blake, Eli and Mars), but I did feel that at over 400 pages long the story dragged at points. Perhaps this pacing was intentional in order to mirror Carver's feelings of loss and depression as he experiences panic attacks and faces charges of criminal negligence. The reading experience is emotionally intense at times.

The writing itself is stellar, even if the internal monologues are a bit mature for a high school boy: "I wonder if the actions we take and the words we speak are like throwing pebbles into a pond; they send ripples that extend farther out from the center until finally they break on the bank or disappear. I wonder if somewhere in the universe, there's still a ripple that's Blake and I sitting in this living room, laughing ourselves silly. Maybe it'll break on some bank somewhere in the vast sky beyond our sight. Maybe it'll disappear. Or maybe it'll keep travelling on for eternity." Truly, the best parts of this book are brief flashbacks and humorous dialogue between the friends. An online discussion guide is available and GOODBYE DAYS received starred reviews from both Booklist and Publishers Weekly. Zentner also wrote The Serpent King which was just nominated for 2018 Abe Lincoln Award.

Links in post:

http://upfront.scholastic.com/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6qALx3d7xJ0R3o1VkI0c1RxOUU/view for ISLMA 2018 awards and
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0ahUKEwix_P7z9eDSAhUo6oMKHZ5jD0gQFgggMAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.randomhouse.com%2Fteachers%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F01%2FGoodbyeDaysDiscussGd_WEB.pdf&usg=AFQjCNHfkI2oEVaVRp1ZWTLF1ucnvzpsAw&bvm=bv.149760088,d.amc&cad=rja

Posted to Goodreads:
I received a e-arc of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

For a more in depth review check out this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCTKm...

Everyone in Carver Briggs's home town thinks he killed his three best friends...including Carver. It was his text message demanding a response that was found in the wreckage of his friend's car after the horrible accident. Now, Carver has to live with the fall-out from his one simple action, fall-out that may result in him being sent to prison for his role in his friend's death.

I was a huge fan of Zentner's first novel "The Serpent King" and he did not disappoint with his follow up book. Zentner did a beautiful job of describing guilt and grief that resonated long after you finished the book.

You can't help by root for Carver during this mess of a story. How he's even managing to deal at all when every single one of his best friends died, is a testament to his strength of character. This was a real and fascinating read of a boy doing his best to shed his guilt and stomach his pain in order to help the family members of his dead best friends. He doesn't always do things eloquently, or right, but he learns to speak his feelings over time and that in itself is the best he could do. Be true to himself and his friends.

Jeff Zentner stated (note: not verbatim) that this book was his love letter to the city of Nashville and I felt that ring true and through from the first page to the last. It made me want to visit the city as soon as possible and it also made me want to sit with him and pick his brain about this engaging, character-driven, emotionally-wrenching, and simply beautiful tale.

Carver Briggs. I mean, poor guy. He's been through the ringer and blames himself for the death of his three best friends. This story explores the dark and scary places our minds visit when dealing with grief and when mixed together with shame and guilt, well, it's a disastrous combination. So much in fact, that Carver begins to experience panic attacks.

The story is told in alternating scenes between past and present so the reader gets a great feel for what the deceased friends were like individually and their dynamic as the "Sauce Crew." It's part of the reason I started to build such strong emotional attachments to each (Eli, Blake, and Mars) and why I cared about Carver so much that I wanted to give him a big ole hug to comfort him like his newfound friend Jesmyn.

Speaking of guilt, Jesmyn just happens to be the "widow" girlfriend of Eli which complicates things a bit. But really, it's probably the criminal investigation prompted by Mars's dad -- who just happens to be a judge and overall menacing guy -- that ends up complicating Carver's life exponentially. What's a person to do when your life is in shambles and you don't know how you can possibly continue? That's right, therapy. The sessions with Dr. Mendez were some of my favorite and he was a great catalyst at bringing about the growth and change Carver undergoes as the story progresses.

And I probably should mention the "goodbye days" since it is the title of the book. This stems from an idea suggested by Blake's grandmother, Nana Betsy. I pictured her as a cute-as-a-button, darling old woman whose wrinkles certainly tell tales, probably the only one other than his parents who doesn't believe he's guilty, and the first to suggest to Carver that they should have a goodbye day to honor the memory of her grandson. It's not long before the other two sets of rents get wind of this and so Carver gets three extremely different and very interesting renditions of a "Goodbye Day."

A huge appeal for me was how raw and true the characters felt - including their blatant and ignorant racism (the adults) and insensitivity to members of the LGBTQ community (the Sauce Crew). Zentner didn't hold much back with these characters and that's why they felt authentic and unapologetic and seriously, like a huge breath of fresh air. Not once did I feel that their sentiments reflected those of the author and just the opposite, I gathered that it was part of their "southern" nature where the older generation garner certain types of prejudices which necessarily trickle down to the younger ones. It was obvious that Zentner really understands these people, a superb quality in an author.

One thing I did notice was that the book lacked funny moments. It's to be expected since the topic of death is clouded in seriousness, but it's exactly why I would have liked to laugh a little more. Maybe it would have given it a more balanced feel. I mean, it's no secret that Jeff Zentner is absolutely hilarious (if you follow him on social media). But now that I think about it, there was one scene in which one character reveals a secret about himself to another, and the tail end of their conversation had me cracking up.

But there is no doubt that I will be pondering the questions this book raises, and its characters, for some time to come. And that, my friends, is the mark of a great book! This one's been out for a week already so if you haven't grabbed your copy, I think its a good idea to consider this one your next (unforgettable) read.

A beautiful second novel about finding a way through immense tragedy, GOODBYE DAYS introduces new characters who seem like they'd be able to walk off of the page and into real life. I highly recommend this novel for fans of contemporary young adult fiction.

Full review on [a cup of tea and an armful of books] through the link below.

To read Goodbye Days by Jeff Zentner is to go through the entire grief process. To mourn, to rage, to laugh, to remember, and to hold and release. It’s a reading experience that I’ve not had with many books, and I’m not sure I’ll have again.

Carver Briggs just lost his three best friends, Mars, Blake, and Eli, in a car accident – one that he might have accidentally caused by texting his friend who was driving. Some of the families of his friends feel the accident is his fault; there’s a possibility that Carver could be charged with a crime. Others just want his help to remember Mars, Blake and Eli through “goodbye days” – days where he helps the families live out the last days of each of his friends.

Goodbye Days has a great hook, but the actual book is very simple. It follows Carver as he deals with and tries to process his grief and the grief of others. There’s plot here, but it’s very free-flowing, anchored by each goodbye day. The rest of the book alternates between sessions with Carver’s therapist, moments with Eli’s girlfriend Jesmyn, and his family.

Carver’s narrative is heavy, weighty with guilt, shame, reluctance, love, and mourning. I read Goodbye Days in small chunks because being in Carver’s head is illuminating, but also profoundly sad. I feel like I experienced the book like Carver does grief – in waves that ebbed and flowed as he found a way to live with himself.

I’m describing this book as very sad…but there are so many moments when I smiled or burst out laughing. Carver spends a lot of the book remembering hilarious, random moments with his friends. These moments saved the book from being too morose. By the end of the book, I felt like I knew all of these characters like I know my own friends.

I think that’s the thing that Jeff Zentner does so well. Like in The Serpent King, I connected so much with Carver, his friends and family that they stopped being characters for me. When Carver goes to see a rock concert with Jesmyn, I was with him. When he had moments with his therapist, or he laughed randomly about something Blake did, or Eli played, or Mars drew, I was with him. I loved and mourned with Carver and the other characters, and as I said in the beginning, I’m not sure I’ll ever have that reading experience again. .

BONUSES:

Storytelling: There’s a lot about the importance of stories, of letting people tell their narratives, and of how storytelling can heal. Definitely the biggest lesson of the book for me .

Romance (Sorta): I can’t really say much without getting into spoilers, but I think Zentner handled this part of the book sensitively, honestly, and respectfully. And that’s all I’m going to say about that (but I would love to discuss with anyone who has read the book!).

Cameos: If you read The Serpent King, you will love this. I sure did.

Voice-tastic Writing: Jeff Zentner astounds me with his ability to write dialogue for teens. The voices of all of his characters ring incredibly true, from big sister Georgia to Eli’s struggling, grieving parents, to therapist Dr. Mendez. I’m amazed by how real these people are to me.

Bromance #squadgoals: The Sauce Crew (Carver, Mars, Blake, and Eli) and their interactions…this is what teenage boys are like to me. A little disgusting, a lot hilarious, and sometimes, unflinchingly honest and real. What I loved most about them was how much they all had each other’s backs while totally ragging on each other.

THE FINAL WORD:

In Goodbye Days, Jeff Zentner manages to explore boy friendship, grief, guilt, loss, love, and family…without losing sight of the characters. Goodbye Days is both very big book, and a very, very small one. In his grief, Carver’s world narrows to just him and taking the steps to breathe and try to feel okay being alive. At the same time, we also see him dealing with those very big themes of how to live, and how to move on. It sounds simple, but to write a book this connected, this honest, and this raw is an impressive feat of storytelling. I won’t forget these characters any time soon.

Recommended for: people who like emotional reads, people who like very honest, true-to-life books, contemporary lovers, people looking for realistic boy friendships.

You know those books that you start reading on a whim and find yourself thinking “just one more chapter, just one more chapter!” Goodbye Days is one of those books. I found myself up late into the wee hours of the morning because I just could not put this baby down. This book is a punch to the gut if I ever saw one. Man, it is heart-wrenching! Absolutely beautiful story! And if I have you worried, let me clarify that this book is by no means depressing or a downer. Yes, the story will destroy you, though Jeff Zentner does this amazing job at not only exploring grief, loss, and guilt, but leaving you with this general feeling of hope and illustrating the beauty of friendship and how nothing can erase that.

The plot just screams tearjerker. Carver Briggs recently lost his three best friends. They were on their way to pick him up when a text message changed everything. Mars, the driver, went to text Carver back when he asked where they were. You look down for a split second and it could change everything. They get into an accident and Carver feels responsible. Now he’s awaiting word on if he’ll face murder charges of not.

Carver struggles with his grief. Then Blake’s grandmother asks Carver to do a “goodbye day” with her. He wants closure, but is worried about the guilt he feels and whether it was his fault. Will Carver ever find peace?

Goodbye Days is full of heart, gorgeous writing, and relatable characters. The portrayal of grief is honest. The story shows that people grieve in so many different ways. It is very realistic. I found myself wanting to recommend to anybody going through the grieving process. If you enjoy YA contemporary fiction, you should definitely pick this one up!

Jeff Zentner can write the hell out of a book. Let's just start there. His first novel The Serpent King was on my Favorite Fiction of 2016 list. I tried to keep my expectations in check for Goodbye Days. He exceeded them. I was truly blown away.

There were four things I especially loved about this novel: the characters, the depiction of grief, the writing, and the setting.

The characters: We see everything from Carver's point of view. We meet his best friends Mars, Eli, and Blake - the Sauce Crew- through Carver's memories but somehow they are as present as if they were living, breathing characters. I felt like I truly understood who they were, even though their deaths permeated each page. Whether Carver was remembering Sauce Crew antics or how he met each one of his friends or even imagining what they'd say to him now, his friends are still a part of him. Sauce Crew was the bulk of his social life and without them around, Carver has only his sister Georgia and Eli's girlfriend Jesmyn. Carver has a hard time opening up to his parents about everything and it was hard to watch this at times because of how much they wanted to be there for him. Yet that's almost an essential part of the teenage experience, is it not?

As Carver and Jesmyn lean more on each other, he has to face some hard truths about his feelings for her. I loved seeing how their friendship developed and how they helped each other grieve, despite the elephant in the room. Jesmyn's backstory and character took the novel in such interesting directions, particularly her synesthesia. The role of creativity in general added an extra depth because they all go to an art academy and each one has their own gift. (Blake's talent was the most unusual and unexpected.) The parents and grandmother of the deceased friends occupy a different space in the novel. They are alternately the angels and devils on Carver's shoulders; some absolving him and some condemning him. I felt their anguish and their despair and their determination to find a new normal. This was important to see, even if it wasn't always comfortable.

The depiction of grief: Watching Carver mourn the loss of his best friends was very moving. He's not spared from his grief in any way. Zentner gives us an inside look at panic attacks, anxiety, and the trauma of grief. I appreciated the emphasis on the benefit of therapy, with medication as needed.

Each family represents a different mourning style and shows the aftereffects of loss. Some grief is healthy, some is not but there's no moralizing or prescription of how it should go. It rang true to life. As readers, we must grapple with the guilt intertwining Carver's grief. Did he play a role in his friends' deaths? Should legal action be taken against him? Not even he can accurately gauge the answers to those questions.

I also look at this through a professional lens. I specialized in child and teen bereavement while I was a hospice social worker. In those cases, we expected the death of a parent or grandparent. Grief is an unwieldy beast, whether or not you know your loved one is dying. Still, there's an extra layer to grief when the loss is unexpected, especially when the person who died is young.I really liked the idea of a "goodbye day" as a tool. I paid keen attention to the interactions with Carver's therapist and it sounded a lot like what I would have said or recommended.

The writing: So many lines knocked me over. From the descriptions to unique turns of phrase, this is a well-crafted novel. The writing isn't static. Each word, each chapter moves us forward and makes us curious about the characters and what might happen next. This could have been a heavy topic- and he doesn't shy away from exploring it- but it's emotionally resonant and there's still a good amount of humor. I laughed out loud way more than I was tempted to tear up. His writing sparkles.

Here are a few of my favorite passages:

"People take shelter under clichés. Language is powerless enough in the face of death. I guess it's asking too much for people to veer from the tried-and-true under such circumstances." p. 17

"There was probably some period when we weren't best friends and inseparable. Days. Maybe weeks, even. But in my memory, from that day on we were as good friends as we'd ever be. It's funny how memory cuts out the boring parts. And that makes it a good story editor." p. 133

"For the most part, you don't hold the people you love in your heart because they rescued you from drowning or pulled you from a burning house. Mostly you hold them in your heart because they save you, in a million quiet and perfect ways, from being alone." p. 190-191

The setting: Zentner said he wanted to write a love letter to Nashville and boy did he. I lived there for 5 years (Full disclosure: I've never met Jeff but he's fun to follow on Twitter) and it is one of my favorite cities. He seamlessly wove in the neighborhoods, parks, and places, many of which I adored. He brought the city to life and I loved knowing exactly where he was describing. Nashville is certainly not perfect (I could give you a list) but it is wonderful in so many ways and this rang true throughout the novel. It's a great place for creatives and it rooted the novel in a hundred different ways.

You may wonder how life-giving a novel about the consequences of driving while texting can be. But this was life-giving because it didn't shy away from the harder parts of grief. It's hard to mourn our loved ones. I can only imagine how I would have responded had my best friends died in high school. At the same time, I have experienced loss and reading about others who grieve, even if they operate differently from me, is part of the healing process. It shows we're not alone and we can get through hard times. It's been a few years since I lost a loved one and I still benefit from those reminders. Plus, this novel is really about what it means to live and that's what made it such an enjoyable read.

A realistic and poignant portrayal of grief, Goodbye Days takes us into the life of Carver, a young man who loses his best friends - Mars, Blake and Eli - in a car accident, and who blames himself for possibly causing it. At the time of the accident, one of his best friends Mars (who was driving) was texting him back. Now, in the aftermath of that accident, Carver is stuck in a whirlpool of grief, fear and guilt. The grief because he lost his closest and only friends in the world, the fear because one of the parents wants a criminal investigation into the accident with the purpose of seeing him in prison, and guilt because moving on feels like he is being stabbed over and over with their loss. My only experience with such a kind of grief has been distant (a family member dying) so I wouldn't know how to even imagine losing someone who has been a part of your life so closely and who have brought light into your life. Now, in his Sauce Crew-less world, his support system is his sister and Eli's girlfriend, Jesmyn. Coping with loss and trying to survive through it are the main arcs of this story.

Emotion-wise, Goodbye Days is raw - it will make you laugh along with the shenanigans of the Sauce Crew, the witty quips between Carver and his sister or Carver and Jesmyn, and make you cry at every part where he remembers them or when their loss hits him hard. Trying to get closure, he agrees to a 'goodbye day' with Blake's grandmother - a day where they would hang out like Blake would with his grandmother, and they can tell each other stories about Blake. What really made me cry in these moments was the fact that it is a wound that you open again and again, to remember the person, but also to let yourself heal. But all of his goodbye days are not the same - because not all people process grief in the same manner. His goodbye days with the other parents are not beautiful and light, but they also show the varied ways in which people mourn.

What I liked in this novel is the presence of a positive support system and a good therapy doctor who help Carver come to terms with this loss. It is not that he is happy and healed at the end of the book, but he is in a place where he can process through the grief of his friends in a better way. I loved the characters in the book, especially his sister, and I also loved how they were open with one another, be it the love or the hatred. I mean, I expected it because it I read The Serpent King, but the writing blew me over again. Zentner crafted an emotional, beautiful piece of art with this novel.

Four best friends from highschool have their lives, hopes and dreams shattered in an instant. At that age young adults think they are invincible and do not always consider the devastating effects texting and driving can have.
Carver Briggs sends a text to his best friend Mars and two other friends Eli and Blake. Unfortunately Mars answers the text whilst driving, resulting in an accident killing all three of them. This book encompasses every emotion one could feel after such a tragic event for all those left behind.
Carver sole survivor from the gang of four feels guilty for sending the text even though Mars shouldn't have answered it whilst driving. The 'Goodbye Days' are suggested by Nana Betsy Blake's Grandmother who wants Carver to join her in celebrating and sharing a day to say the goodbye to Blake they didn't get to have. Not everyone is so understanding though, some family members of the dead friends believe that Carver was the cause of their deaths and should be punished.
This book cleverly and emotionally draws you in to follow everyone's grief stricken journey, which like in real life affects individuals in different ways. It is. Beautifully written, although at times the plot is simplistic and predictable which would not suit everyone's taste. A must read for everyone to appreciate those family and friends we hold close as if anything that this story shows life comes with fragility. A must read for every young adult who gets behind the wheel of a car. Nothing is worth the risk. Get your tissues ready.

Ever since I started hearing the buzz around Jeff Zentner's debut novel last year, The Serpent King, I have been eager to find out what all the fuss was about. I was so excited when Netgalley approved my request to review an ARC of Goodbye Days, and not knowing a thing about this book I dove in headfirst!

The story begins with Carver Briggs at the funerals of his three best friends, who were recently killed in a car accident. In the wake of his friends deaths Carver learns that texting was most likely the culprit - and not just any text, the driver was responding to Carver's message - "Where are you guys? Text me back." On top of the guilt he already feels, Carver also faces the possibility of prosecution for negligent homicide.

Following the accident, Carver goes through many stages of grief, guilt, and fear - all of which are executed perfectly. He then goes on a series of "Goodbye Days" with the family members his friends have left behind as a form of closure.

Zentner does an excellent job of showing the pain involved when losing a son, a brother, a friend - It was heartbreaking to say the least and impossible not to feel their emotions as if they were my own. Jeff was able to make the characters and situation even more real through flashbacks by making me fall in love with already deceased characters, which is not an easy feat! This was both cruel and ingenious on his part. I loved every member of "Sauce Crew" and found myself wishing for the impossible.

This is the first of Jeff Zentner's books that I've read but I already know he has a fan for life. The writing is phenomenal and the story is emotional and moving - gripping you straight away and stays with you for days after finishing. By the end you'll be holding your loved ones closer and trying not to take the time you have together for granted, because you never know when anyone's last day is. I would recommend this book to everyone, not just YA readers. There is a great message here for all the ages.

If this book doesn't make you cry, you probably need to check your pulse. Perhaps you're a zombie. There are no zombies in this book though--just a boy and his guilt that eats him alive every day even as there are tiny glimmering moments of happiness. It's the kind of book that makes you hate and love the world all in one breathe. I highly recommend picking it up!

Zentner's got a way with words. Period. He did it in The Serpent King and he did it in this book too. And this book is impactful-- important for the message it sends but also for the relationships he shares.

Carver was texting his friend Mars, but Mars was driving a car that also included the other two members of their silly friend group, the Sauce Crew, Eli and Blake. And Mars was in the middle of a text back to Carver when they slam into a truck and all three of them are killed. Carver holds survivor's guilt, blame for causing the accident because he texted Mars to text him back, and loneliness because his three best friends are now dead. The book opens with him attending the last of the three funerals.

It's beautifully arched story details how Carver is grieving over his friends, including numerous flashbacks to humorous escapades, but Carver's visits to a mental health professional to deal with a new normal that includes panic attacks, and his budding friendship with one of the only people who will talk to him AND understands his pain, Eli's girlfriend, Jesamyn. He especially needs a friends when Eli's twin sister, Adair, as well as many of the parents of the dead friends blames Carver and wants to see him punished for what they feel is his culpability.

The book is a series of profiles in healthy and unhealthy relationships, feelings, and coping mechanisms. It's also just about life and Zentner can create sentences and paragraphs and characters that tug at every human emotion that you have. There were tears, there was laughter.

in depth

If you enjoy getting your heart shredded (in the best way, I swear), then pick up Goodbye Days. I was in a mood, and so it was surprisingly cathartic. Told in alternating present and flashbacks, it's the heart-wrenching, witty story of a white teenage boy who's just lost his three best friends--because they ran off the road, responding to a text he sent them. It's about self-forgiveness, love, grief, and what it means to really know a person.

Above all, I'm so glad I finally read a Zentner book. Everyone raved about The Serpent King and I just never got to it. Then I was in a slump and I made myself read this. I plowed through it in two days, and only because I needed sleep. Zentner's prose is wickedly, darkly funny. Carver's voice is distinct, an endearing mix of awkwardness, teenage boy humor, and profundity. And since he goes to an arts academy and wants to be a writer, the elevation of his prose fits his character in a way that seems artificial in other books. I'm curious to see how other reviewers think he handled aspects of diversity; I thought some of the dialogue sounded a little too teachy, and while I thought his treatment of race and sexual orientation was respectful, I'm also white and straight so it's not my wheelhouse. However, I laughed. I highlighted quotes. I cried (inwardly). I thought about the world in a new way.

There's just something so real about Carver's story. Whether he's describing something in a clever, incisive way or talking about dumb inside jokes, I bought it. I saw my own friends in some of the boys' ridiculousness (like trying to characterize all animals as dogs or cats) and laughed my ass off. His relationships with his parents, sister, friends, and other people around him feel authentic and complex. That's because the people feel authentic and complex. They're quirky without being caricatures and familiar without being types. Each of Carver's friends and Jesmyn, one of their girlfriends, is vibrant and (excuse the wording) alive.

The plot is also quirky in that way of clever contemporaries, but not too much. I could imagine someone coming up with the idea of Goodbye Days quite easily. A last day with your departed loved one? I think many people do something like it in their own way. I also didn't feel manipulated. Carver does go through a great deal of awful-ness. People treat him unfairly. He does stupid shit. Some of the ways others act towards him strained my incredulity a little bit, but not enough to raise alarms.

The only piece I just kept circling back to was the fact that (you learn this very early) some people want Carver to be charged for his friends' deaths. I've heard of drivers caught texting getting charged, but not the people who sent them the texts. In the end, I thought Zentner dealt with that part realistically, but it bugged me enough to pull me out of the pages a few times so I could do some (fruitless) googling.

I've read some reviews were people thought it was over-the-top, or manipulative. I didn't experience that. For me, Goodbye Days was a cathartic read that masterfully trod the line between tragic and heart-warming with a zingy humor that kept us from moving into sickly-sweet territory. I connected so easily with Carter, saw so much truth in him. This book brought up all sorts of existential thoughts long after the last page, and it made me want to grab The Serpent King asap. It made me want to have my own Goodbye Day (before it's necessary, of course). I'll remember it for a long time to come.


in a sentence
Goodbye Days is a quirky-but-authentic exploration of grief and self-forgiveness, with snappy prose, dark humor, and memorable characters.

Jeff Zentner's second book is a heartbreaking and beautiful exploration of grief and death. While I personally did not enjoy it as much as his first, The Serpent King, it was still very entertaining and I did like it. Carver is a protagonist you can relate to. Even if you've never been in the exact situation he was, you know what he's feeling if someone you love has passed away. Goodbye Days is hard to read at times because of the dark topic, but it's worth it. Zentner's writing is wonderful and addicting. At first I wasn't completely engrossed in the story, and it took longer than it should have for me to start liking the book, but after I got farther in I did start really enjoying it. I would highly recommend this incredible book.

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.

"Jeff Zentner is dangerous." That's how I began my review of last year's standout The Serpent King, and it turns out the label must still be applied. Jeff Zentner deserves to be locked up in his own corner at the bookstore labeled "Dangerous Writer," in a cage where snake tongues slither out and beckon you to reach your hand inside, where incredibly venomous fangs puncture your flesh.

Goodbye Days is all about dying and dealing with death. Carver texts one of his friends, who tries to answer the message while driving; he and two other members of the Sauce Crew (their friend group) die in a car accident. Carver must go on, as the living must, trying to understand his new world and the part he plays in creating it.

It's easy to suspect that this novel will be a mess: let me be clear that it is one of the least messy things I've ever read. It's careful, it's smart, it's thoughtful, it's heartfelt. There are feelings on every page, but they're emotions well-earned; they never demand you feel a certain way, they never feel inauthentic or superficial. What I'm trying to say is the characters in this book are shaped by grief, but they shape their grief, too--we see a dozen different shades and angles of sadness and loss in this story, each of them well-realized and painful. It's easy for grief in art to be melodramatic: it's our natural impulse, to express such a powerful feeling, by going big or going home. But it's not like that in real life, and where this novel really succeeds is in its small moments, tiny asides where a character weeps silently, talks or doesn't talk about their feelings, acknowledges or denies the suffocating, throbbing threat of death that looms in the air all the time. It's stunning.

As I said before, what makes Zentner so dangerous is his intelligence: the thing I appreciate most about his writing his how his characters call each other out when they're shitty. Someone's racist? Call it out. Someone's sexist? Call it out. Few authors are able to create characters who are flawed but learning--it's the kind of growing, changing world we hope for (insert a "this is the future liberals want" meme here). And it's nice to see that in fiction.

What's also nice to see in fiction is friendship. The default idea about how to write is to pile strife and despair on characters, which of course is great and true because what story runs well on happiness and joy alone (answer: none). Zentner cleverly sets up his story, though, to interject love and friendship into this tragedy with interposed memories of the Sauce Crew just goofing around. These scenes feel so quintessentially guys-in-high-school that I caught myself rolling my eyes, which I mean as a compliment: I had no groups of guy friends in high school because I found their antics overwhelming, so the author really captures that interplay realistically.

The shifting between Carver post-accident and his friends pre-death also works really well in creating a textual psychology; we're constantly careering between warmth and emptiness in a way that clearly mirrors Carver's own feelings--there's a moment when Carver says that every day, for the first five seconds of each morning, he wakes up forgetting that his friends are dead, and structuring Goodbye Days to include these memories drives that feeling home, submerges you into one character's perspective in a way that enriches your understanding of all the characters' perspectives. Shifting between narrative threads can feel gimmicky, but here it never does.

Perhaps the thing that wowed me the most about this book was its approach to handling love in conjunction with grief. Zentner renders love how it really is: full of yearning and hope but built on a foundation of panic and loneliness. There's a love story here (kind of), but we're also guided through parental and sibling love too, bumping shoulders with ideas of replacement and surrogacy and absence along the way. Too often is love boiled down to its brightest, shining moments; even in real life, too often do we ignore the pain and discomfort that being loved so hard can bring.

Last year, I'm sure Jeff Zentner heard a million times that he was "one to watch." But two books in, I think we can do more than just watch him: he's one to trust, he's one to believe, he's the real deal.

My rating: 5/5