It's tragic enough that 17-year-old Carver Briggs's friends Mars, Eli and Blake were killed in a driving-while-texting car accident, but Carver feels responsible: it was his text that Mars was responding to when the accident happened. ("Where are you guys? Text me back.") Wracked with grief, terrified by the potential lawsuit against him and bewildered by his new closeness with Jesmyn, Eli's girlfriend, Carver is foundering: "I once thought heartbreak was akin to contracting a cold or becoming pregnant. It only comes one at a time." But it turns out your "love heart, separate from your grieving heart, or your guilt heart, or your fear heart" can all be broken in their own way.
When Blake's grandmother asks Carver to take part in a "goodbye day" with her--a chance to do all the things they imagine Blake might have wanted to do on his last day--a seed is planted. Carver begins to wonder if it wouldn't be helpful for each of the three grieving families to have a goodbye day to help them move forward.
In his gorgeous, devastating YA novel, Jeff Zentner (The Serpent King) explores the tormented inner life of a teenager in crisis. Although many will never experience tragedy on the scale Carver does, virtually everyone at some point goes through the kind of hardship that can drive a person deeply inward. With the help of a caring, funny therapist, memories of his sweet, smart and goofy friends, and Jesmyn, Carver struggles to find a way out of pure despair by recognizing that the living "still have to live." --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor