Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead — A Review

Just finished this YA book last night! I do enjoy some YA fiction, really and truly. I try to keep a diverse reading palette, because you never know what's going to be good. There are some amazing YA out there, folks. Don't be afraid to read it.

So, Goodbye Stranger is set in New York City, and is the story of girls. It's the story of three seventh grade friends and a mystery person, (a slightly older girl, you don't learn her identity until the end of the book) and how friendships, first love, family, hormones, puberty and school all implode on your when you are hitting your teens. Told from various narratives by chapter, all the stories eventually connect in some way at the end.

I was a little confused with the narrative in the beginning, it seems to just dive into the characters without giving you so much as an idea of who they were. Which works, sometimes, but was a little off for me in this case. However, the more I discovered about these weird and wacky and at the same time so utterly normal girls, the more I recalled my own adolescence, and was able to put myself back into their place. Bridget called Bridge, who wears cat ears just because and suffers paralyzing dreams recalling her brush with death at eight years old is the center of the story. Her friends are growing up without her, it seems, and what was always, suddenly isn't.

The author is wonderful at capturing that strangeness of early teenage-hood, and all the bumps that go along with it. She seems to be able to call upon her adolescence and get it out on the page without sounding like she's trying too hard. You know, like the hip youth pastor who 'totally gets you!' trying too hard? None of that here. She conveys the depth of emotion, intelligence, and newness of those early teen years. There is a first time for everything, and we forget how that feels as we age. This reminds you, and, as a adult, I hope keeps my mind aware of that time when my kids reach that age.

I would have picked this up when I was in my early teens, pretty sure. I was an emotional blob of goo, so this would have appealed to my overly angsty self.

There is a sense, and I'm guessing it's because of the setting, that these kids got $$$, they have that privilege there, handed to them. The parents all seem fairly well-to-do, and that always kind of got under my skin in YA books because when I was growing up, I was pretty poor and had a hard time relating to characters like this sometimes. It would trivialize their issues to me, hence negating the 'it' factor for the book. It's nothing blatant, but it's kind of obvious in here.

All in all, give it to your 12 year old or maybe even your 11 year old girl. Kids seem to be growing up a helluva lot quicker than I did, but I am getting old and probably just losing my perspective.