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Book Summary and Reviews of Where Was Goodbye? by Janice Lynn Mather

Where Was Goodbye? by Janice Lynn Mather

Where Was Goodbye?

by Janice Lynn Mather

  • Publishes:
  • Apr 29, 2025, 320 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A teen girl searches for closure after her brother dies by suicide in this breathtaking novel for "fans of Erika L. Sánchez's I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter and Sarah Everett's How to Live without You" (Booklist, starred review).

Karmen is about to start her last year of high school, but it's only been six weeks since her brother, Julian, died by suicide. How is she supposed to focus on school when huge questions loom: Why is Julian gone? How could she have missed seeing his pain? Could she have helped him?

When a blowup at school gets Karmen sent home for a few weeks, life gets more complicated: things between her parents are tenser than ever, her best friend's acting like a stranger, and her search to understand why Julian died keeps coming up empty.

New friend Pru both baffles and comforts Karmen, and there might finally be something happening with her crush, Isaiah, but does she have time for either, or are they just more distractions? Will she ever understand Julian's struggle and tragedy? If not, can she love—and live—again?

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Readers will enjoy the book's satisfying plot and thematic endings. Hand to fans of Erika L. Sánchez's I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (2017) and Sarah Everett's How to Live without You (2022), whether they enjoyed the mystery, the mental-health focus, or the true-to-life voices." —Booklist (starred review)

"Mather writes about depression and anxiety without judgment, and her depiction of Karmen's survivor's guilt...is handled with considerable nuance and empathy. A moving look at a sister's flawed, heartfelt attempts to heal in the wake of emotional devastation." —Kirkus Reviews

"A unique and necessary view of teenage mourning." —School Library Journal

This information about Where Was Goodbye? 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.

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More Information

Janice Lynn Mather is a Bahamian Canadian author. Her first novel, Learning to Breathe, was a Governor General's Award finalist, a Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize finalist, shortlisted for the Amy Mathers Teen Book Award, an ALA/YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults selection, an Amelia Bloomer Book List pick, and a Junior Library Guild Selection. Her second novel, Facing the Sun, was an Amy Mathers Teen Book Award winner. Where Was Goodbye? is her third novel for teens. Janice Lynn lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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