After Carver loses his three best friends due to a car crash, he has multiple Goodbye Days to heal his grief. Carver can’t stop blaming himself for the accident. As we skip between before and after the accident, we see different relationships, family dynamics, and problems that people have.
Zetner portrays multiple issues throughout Goodbye Days. The main focus is texting and driving. I found this to be really important, and it’s good as many teens reading this will be starting to drive. It’s also a good reminder for those of us who have been driving for years. Zetner also had a unique point of who is to blame in these situations? Is it the driver who chose to text or the person texting them as they knew the person would be driving?
Goodbye Days are one of the ways Carver uses to help his grief and loss. Each person he interacts with seems to have a very different way of grieving. Zetner writes the exchanges between people grieving differently extremely well. There’s a lot of emotion involved. We see different outcomes at the end of the book for how people have dealt with grief.
Our main character also suffers from panic attacks following the accident. The way the panic attacks are written makes you really feel empathy for Carver. Also you feel the heartbreak and grief alongside him. Carver’s therapy sessions are also portrayed in a really good light. His mental health isn’t mocked or making him seem less than he is. He’s shown that this is a natural aspect of loss, and that there are ways to get better.
There are some problematic aspects within the flashback scenes. Some of the jokes are fairly poor taste, although they are realistic of teenage boys. The being prosecuted premise, I felt, was a bit far fetched. Although maybe in America, it would be more likely? As I’m British I don’t really understand the law side of the book, but I felt like it was a pretty dumb case.
I received Goodbye Days* by Jeff Zetner as an e-book from the publisher via Netgalley. This is an unbiased and honest review.
