After four towns in two years, McLean has perfected the art of reinventing herself, until a neighbor and a town make her want to stay herself
A new name in every town
Since her parents' messy divorce, McLean Sweet has moved with her father, a restaurant consultant who fixes failing restaurants, from town to town. In every new school she becomes someone else: Eliza the cheerleader, Lizbet the drama kid, Beth the joiner. It is easier than being McLean, the girl whose mother remarried the coach of the local college basketball team and started a new family. In Lakeview, though, she accidentally tells people her real name.
Who will enjoy it
Teen and adult readers who like quiet, character-driven contemporary fiction about family, friendship and figuring out who you are.
What you will get
A warm, perceptive story about a girl who has reinvented herself in every town and finally has to decide who she wants to be.
What Happened to Goodbye Facts: Pages, Genre and Setting
Genre
Young Adult · Starting over · Divorce · Small town
Length
432 pages · ≈ 13 h
More about this book
Lakeview gives McLean the house next door to Dave, a smart, funny boy with overprotective parents, and a lonely new school that is about to become less lonely. A project to build a scale model of the town, a restaurant in need of rescue and its energetic manager all pull her into the life she has avoided. Meanwhile, she is still not speaking honestly to her mother.
Dessen is especially good at the texture of ordinary days: restaurant shifts, late-night conversations, the awkwardness of a family dinner that goes wrong. McLean's anger at her mother is real and understandable, and the novel lets it soften slowly rather than resolving it with a speech. The romance is gentle and secondary; the heart of the book is the friendship and the question of what it means to belong somewhere.
Like many Dessen novels it is long and unhurried, and readers who want high drama may grow impatient. Those who enjoy her style will find it one of her most mature books. It pairs well with a long weekend and a cup of something warm. About 432 pages in the Speak paperback.
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