Goodbye Days

Jeff Zentner

Apr 2017 · Random House

About this ebook

'Gorgeous, heartbreaking, and ultimately life-affirming' Nicola Yoon

'Hold on to your heart: this book will wreck you, fix you, and most definitely change you' Becky Albertalli

Can a text message destroy your life?

Carver Briggs never thought a simple text would cause a fatal crash, killing his three best friends, Mars, Eli, and Blake. Now Carver can’t stop blaming himself for the accident and even worse, there could be a criminal investigation into the deaths.

Then Blake’s grandmother asks Carver to remember her grandson with a ‘goodbye day’ together. Carver has his misgivings, but he starts to help the families of his lost friends grieve with their own memorial days, along with Eli’s bereaved girlfriend Jesmyn. But not everyone is willing to forgive. Carver’s own despair and guilt threatens to pull him under into panic and anxiety as he faces punishment for his terrible mistake. Can the goodbye days really help?

Ratings and reviews

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.

About the author

Jeff Zentner was a singer-songwriter and guitarist who released five albums and appeared on recordings with Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, and Debbie Harry. He is now an appellate attorney for the State of Tennessee and lives in Nashville with his wife and son. He wrote his debut novel The Serpent King in a month, writing on his mobile phone on his commute and at night, weekends and lunchtimes between court cases.