A review by charmaineac
Goodbye from Nowhere by Sara Zarr

4.0

This book is nostalgia in a bottle (akin to "lightning in a bottle"). Kyle is put in a supremely messed up situation, and he handles it... well... not perfectly, but not awfully either. At the end of the day, he was pretty mature and I was rooting for him. He's got a bright future ahead. I am all for Coach Kyle!!

The cousin friendship felt like it bordered on incestuous for a second there, but luckily never crossed the line. Kyle is a needy dude, and I hope his tendency to wear his heart on his sleeve doesn't hurt him later.

I tend to be way more tolerant of situations like the parental one than most people out there, but that's mainly because I know it's so real. So many of my friends and acquaintances have SOME stories of cheating, although we're not old enough for adultery to be a thing yet. I hope it doesn't become a trend among the people I know, of course. But I think I'm trying to say that it doesn't feel so far-fetched to me. I wish we got more of the confrontation from the parents; it felt like a cop-out to say "We'll talk about it at home" and then get a time-skip.

I love Nowhere Farm. Things, people, places, and feelings are all temporal. I'm glad the kids got the childhood they did. I'm also glad they got the send-off they did. How can I be sentimental over something I wasn't even part of?!