The Goodbye Girls Book Review

The Goodbye Girls by Lisa Harrington.

From Goodreads: The students at Lizzie’s high school are notoriously terrible at breakups. Forget awkward conversations—they’re dumping each other via text. Inspired by the terrible breakups around her, sixteen-year-old Lizzie, strapped for cash and itching to go on the school’s band trip to NYC, teams up with her best friend, Willa, to create a genius business: personalized gift baskets—breakup baskets—sent from dumper to dumpee. The Goodbye Girls operate in secret, and business is booming. But it’s not long before someone begins sabotaging The Goodbye Girls, sending impossibly cruel baskets to seemingly random targets, undermining everything Lizzie and Willa have built and jeopardizing their anonymity. Soon family, friendship, and a budding romance are on the line. Will Lizzie end up saying goodbye to the business for good?

Thanks to Netgalley for sending me and E-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

So this book came out earlier this year, but Netgalley still lets people request it, so I thought I’d try my luck in snagging a copy. It sounded like a fun, light-hearted and quirky read, and that’s pretty much what I got.

It was a really quick read. I finished two books in the same day; A Thousand Perfect Notes and The Goodbye Girls. It was quite nice to have something lighthearted after the heart-crushing of A Thousand Perfect Notes, so that’s probably one of the reasons I enjoyed this book as much as I did. The premise is pretty simple: Lizzie needs money for a school trip, and she and her friend Willa decide to start a special business together, sending break-up baskets to people anonymously. They rationalise this by agreeing that this is a better way of getting broken up with than say by text, but obviously some people don’t take it that way and then a bunch of things happen with the baskets and suddenly it’s for the best that they’ve done their whole business anonymously.

Both Lizzie and Willa were okay characters. I feel like there could have been a bit more depth there, particularly in terms of Lizzie. There was a lot of characters just kinda doing things, and the book might have done with a little more development of characters along the way. Same with Trish.  I got some of the complex sisters who love/hate each other vibe, but not enough.

Plot-wise, it was quite a fun ride. I did guess some of the plot twists, particularly with what was going on with the mother, but even when I guessed what was happening beforehand, seeing it unfold was exciting and fun. I definitely liked the whole concept of the baskets and all the things going on with that, it was pretty interesting. Unfortunately, I’m not entirely sure what happened during the ending of the book. The E-book ARC acted up a bit, and it meant that I couldn’t read text messages that were on the page. They came up blank instead. So there were a few times when the plot suddenly jumped, and the ending was cut short for me, but obviously that’s a problem with the Netgalley copy that won’t be appearing in the finished version.

To be honest, I don’t really have a whole load to say about this book. It was a reasonable read, and I liked the quirky plot. The characters could have done with a bit more substance, but I liked some of the twists and turns in the book and how quickly I got through it. Overall, I’m giving The Goodbye Girls a 5.5/10 stars.

Has anyone else read this book or plans to? What did you all think of this review. As always, I love to read your thoughts and opinions on books and reviews, so feel free to share in the comment section below.