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Two teens meet after tragedy and learn about love, loss, and letting go.
Naima Rodriguez doesn't want your patronizing sympathy as she grieves her father, her hero―a fallen Marine. She'll hate you forever if you ask her to open up and remember him "as he was," though that's all her loving family wants her to do in order to manage her complex OCD and GAD. She'd rather everyone back the-eff off while she separates her Lucky Charms marshmallows into six, always six, Ziploc bags, while she avoids friends and people and living the life her father so desperately wanted for her.
Dew respectfully requests a little more time to process the sudden loss of his parents. It's causing an avalanche of secret anxieties, so he counts on his trusty voice recorder to convey the things he can't otherwise say aloud. He could really use a friend to navigate a life swimming with pain and loss and all the lovely moments in between. And then he meets Naima and everything's changed―just not in the way he, or she, expects.
Candace Ganger's Six Goodbyes We Never Said is no love story. If you ask Naima, it's not even a like story. But it is a story about love and fear and how sometimes you need a little help to be brave enough to say goodbye.
"Through the teens' humorously awkward gravitation toward each other, Ganger creates a heartfelt, convincing story about the restorative power of self-care and friendship." - Publishers Weekly
"The novel is ultimately hopeful, and readers will connect with the messy, visceral lives simmering on the page. Profoundly emotional and truthful." - Kirkus Reviews
"Naima is diagnosed by the author with obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder, while Dew is diagnosed with social anxiety. These issues are explored with humanizing examples that invite empathy. Sure to be reassuring to those working their way through grief." - School Library Journal
"A no-filter story of living with loss, guilt, and mental illness. Naima and Dew are a mess of imperfections, and you'll want nothing more than for them to figure out how to be okay(ish) again." - Rebecca Barrow, author of This is What It Feels Like
"One of the realest voices of our generation, Ganger infuses this story with relatable, flawed teens who must learn how to cope in this world or be lost forever. I laughed and cried while reading and this book will stick with me for ages." - Jessica Burkhart, editor of Life Inside My Mind: 31 Authors Share Their Personal Struggles
"Six Goodbyes We Never Said is a knowing tour de force filled with crackling wit, pain, and mini, freeze-dried marshmallows. Original and funny, the best parts may be found in the small moments, especially Ganger's hilarious, spot-on dialogue, as well as tucked within the brilliantly-placed parentheticals. All that and a bowl of Lucky Charms. Or maybe six boxes." - Gae Polisner, award-winning author of The Memory of Things and In Sight of Stars
This information about Six Goodbyes We Never Said was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Candace Ganger is the author of Six Goodbyes We Never Said and The Inevitable Collision of Birdie & Bash as well as a contributing writer for HelloGiggles and obsessive marathoner. Aside from having past lives as a singer, nanotechnology website editor, and world's worst vacuum sales rep, she's also ghostwritten hundreds of projects for companies, best-selling fiction and award-winning nonfiction authors alike. She lives in Ohio with her family.
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