What Happened to Goodbye

What Happened to Goodbye is a contemporary romance for young adults by Sarah Dessen. First published in 2011, and nominated for the 2011 Goodreads Choice Award, the book follows a teenage girl struggling to cope after her parents get divorced. The book is very popular with its target audience, and critics praise it for its engaging storytelling and characterization. Dessen is a New York Times bestselling writer. She primarily writes romance novels for teenagers. Before writing full-time, Dessen worked as a waitress and then a teacher at the University of North Carolina.

The protagonist is a seventeen-year-old girl called Mclean Sweet. Mclean lives with her father in a town called Lakeview. Her parents divorced two years ago after her mother ran off with a local basketball coach. Her father works for a restaurant business, and he travels around the country fixing problem branches. In two years, Mclean has lived in four towns, and all she wants is the chance to settle down and make friends.

Mclean’s dad jokes that, whenever they move towns, Mclean adopts a new personality. Sometimes she’s a preppy cheerleader, other times she’s an activist, and once she posed as a goth. This time, her father suggests that she should just be herself. The problem is that Mclean doesn’t know who she is anymore. She doesn’t want to worry her father, and so she agrees to give authenticity a try.



Meanwhile, her father works on his new restaurant, Luna Blu. It’s a contemporary Italian bistro, and it’s struggling to make any money. The manager, Opal, is a strong-headed woman who doesn’t take criticism well. Opal has managed the restaurant since she was a teenager, and she can’t accept that she’s running it into the ground. While Mclean struggles to fit in at school, her father has his work cut out for him at Luna Blu.

At school, Mclean attempts to make friends. The first student she meets is a girl called Deb who loves to mentor newbies. Deb claims to be popular and preppy, but Mclean notices that no one sits with her at lunch. Although Mclean meets other girls, Riley and Heather, she decides to sit with Deb who befriended her first. Mclean realizes that she’s not the only person who pretends to be something they’re not.

In the meantime, Mclean gets numerous calls from her mother. Her mother wants to see her because she has a new baby. However, Mclean can’t face her mother after how she broke her father’s heart. She’s very loyal to her father and she doesn’t plan on talking to her mother again. She doesn’t tell her father about the calls because she doesn’t want to stress him out.



Life at Luna Blu isn’t going well. Mclean discovers that her father plans on shutting the restaurant down because Opal is so hard to work with. Now that she’s making friends at school, Mclean dreads Luna Blu closing because it probably means moving town again. She’s especially annoyed because she’s crushing on a boy at school called Dave.

Meanwhile, Mclean gets another call from her mother. If Mclean doesn’t visit for spring break, her mother will change the custody agreement so that she’s forced to visit more. Reluctantly, Mclean decides to leave her father behind for the break. However, before Mclean leaves home, she gets the news she’s been dreading.

Her father wants to move to Hawaii, because there’s a great job opening there. He’s shutting Luna Blu and he wants to move right after the closing date. Mclean fights with her father and travels out to her mother’s beach house for some space. She doesn’t tell anyone where she’s going, but then the worst happens—everyone at school finds out that she used to pose as different people at other schools. She has social media accounts under various false names, and everyone’s laughing at her. Now, Mclean feels like a pariah.



Mclean enjoys her time with her mother, but she soon feels like an intruder in her new life. She takes off without telling anyone where she’s going. She hides out at a motel called the Poseidon and calls Dave. Dave promises to come and get her, and she’s relieved that someone at school doesn’t hate her.

Before Dave arrives, Mclean’s parents track her down. They confront her about how she’s feeling and what’s going through her mind after the divorce. They realize that they haven’t been very supportive, and they’ve been too wrapped up in their own lives to see how hurt she is. Mclean declares that she wants to return to Lakeview and stay there. She’s sick of moving and, for once, she’s being herself. Her father agrees to give Luna Blu another shot.

Back in Lakeview, Mclean starts dating Dave. She talks to Deb about her fake social media profiles, and Deb makes her feel better. For the first time, Mclean feels like people accept and understand her, and she’s reclaimed her identity. When the book ends, her dad takes Opal out on a date, and the Sweet family aren’t leaving Lakeview any day soon.