The Goodbye Girls Book Review
The Goodbye Girls... where to begin? I really thought this novel was interesting due to it's premise, two girls that start a business selling gift baskets to nicely break the news that your partner just broke up with you. And since it's all anonymous, there's room for sabotage and sending baskets full of blackmail instead of gifts. I thought it was a really interesting concept. This book is like a standard rom-com, or a teen romance movie. Lets go over the things this that this book does well. I saw the reviews, and they said that Lisa Harrington writes dialogue well. I have to agree. It's quite natural, especially for teenagers. This was written a few years ago but it still holds up decently well. I don't like when authors use a lot of slang that they think teens use. It's also well paced, and it holds up well as it is. There's nothing technically wrong with this book, with the characters or the story.
So at this point, it really boils down to what you like in a story due to your own personal taste. I will say right off the bat that I do not love teen romance movies... I'm sorry. This book also had a fair bit of swearing, which I didn't really like, and I didn't love the storylines for each character. This book deals with a lot of really interesting and messy characters, our main character Lizzie has eyes for her sister's boyfriend, and Lizzie's widowed mother is getting back into the dating realm again. The only downside to her mothers side plot is that she's dating a married man who's cheating on his wife? I think with subplots like these, from what I understood, it was only messy for the sake of being messy. The ending of this book left me far from satisfied, and all of it just felt like we were back to square one again? But not even that, we're set back a bit? None of these characters, especially not Lizzie, had solid arcs. I think that's my main complaint with this book. Lizzie shows lots of integrity towards the end, but she had always come off as a likeable and integral to begin with.
I would have liked to see a bit more investigative work and hunting for the culprit. Not like a full on mystery novel, but I would have been nice to see that. With the breakup baskets being sabotaged, it could have made for some really nice detective work within the novel. But unfortunately that's not what this book is, and maybe that's a good thing because the main culprit is incredibly obvious. It's almost a dead giveaway from the first time they're introduced, so there isn't much mystery there. This book is more of a... dare I say... disposable... read. It's exactly a book like The Summer I Turned Pretty or The Kissing Booth played out. Unfortunately I have seen those. But hey... if you're into that... then The Goodbye Girls is just what you're looking for in your next summer read.
