Title: Six Goodbyes We Never Said
Published: September 24, 2019
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.
I started reading this book before anything happened with my dad. He's been battling cancer for maybe 7 years but recently the last few weeks we've been in and out of the hospital and now we are looking at a timeline. Ever changing but possibly soon. So this book changed for me and the way I connect with these characters changed.
Naima and Dew are both finding ways to grieve after the loss of parents as well as dealing with their own mental illnesses. I thought the book was really good in the way that it is leading you through the characters lives after this loss. As far as plot goes, it's finding a way to live with the tragedy that happened to them and find their own happiness somehow.
As much as I struggled to connect with Naima. I hated the way she treats people but grief comes in all forms so I tried to understand that.
It's hard not to love Dew because he has such a big heart. I hate he has struggle with his social anxiety but he works so hard at getting it under control. You want him to find a place of balance.
I really liked Six Goodbyes We Never Said. It's well written and touching. A book you can feel the heart and soul in.
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.
Twitter: @candylandgang + @WednesdayBooks
