Sarah Chadee

Press Pass Cor­re­spon­dent

As any­one who has read one of her nov­els be­fore will know, Sarah Dessen nev­er dis­ap­points. Her lat­est cre­ation tells of the sto­ry of McLean, a teenage girl who has been in the mid­dle of a bit­ter di­vorce. Her fa­ther, the per­son she chose to live with, works as a con­sul­tant for an eatery chain and be­cause of this, McLean is forced to move from place to place over short pe­ri­ods of time. Her par­ents got di­vorced two years ago when her moth­er cheat­ed on her dad with the coach of his favourite bas­ket­ball team, a dou­ble be­tray­al that has left McLean an­gry, bit­ter and un­sure of her iden­ti­ty. In an at­tempt to es­cape her past, McLean con­stant­ly rein­vents her­self, go­ing from Beth to Liz­beth to Eliza, but nev­er McLean...un­til Lakeshore. Now that McLean has cho­sen to use her re­al name, she seems to be un­able to be any­body but her re­al self and slow­ly opens her­self up to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hav­ing at­tach­ments. She be­friends Heather, Ri­ley and Deb, who seem to all have dif­fer­ent per­son­al con­flicts which bring them to­geth­er. McLean slow­ly falls for Dave, the boy-ge­nius who lives next door who makes her feel strange­ly com­fort­able and se­cure.

McLean is an in­stant­ly love­able char­ac­ter be­cause she choos­es to face what­ev­er both­ers her in a very pro-ac­tive way. She is open about her anger and her con­flict from the word go and doesn't se­cret­ly rebel - she fights her moth­er with every­thing she's got, for the right to make her own choic­es. McLean teach­es us the les­son that in fight­ing back what re­al­ly hurts and both­ers us, peace­ful out­comes can be made. What Hap­pened to Good­bye is more than just a ro­mance nov­el; it's a book that tack­les the is­sue of iden­ti­ty cri­sis and the te­dious task of grow­ing up. We learn that the on­ly true way to be hap­py and deal with past hard­ships is to be our­selves, not be­ing afraid of let­ting peo­ple in, forg­ing re­la­tion­ships and al­so that voic­ing pow­er­ful emo­tions can be self-lib­er­at­ing. Like any oth­er book by Sarah Dessen, this one is a read that you'll en­joy from start to fin­ish.