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Overall Summary

What Happened to Goodbye is a contemporary romance novel for teenagers. It follows the story of a girl who struggles with her parents’ divorce. The book has received many awards, including being nominated for Goodreads Choice Award in 2011. Critics praise it for its engaging storytelling and characterization, as well as author Sarah Dessen’s writing style. Before becoming an author, she worked as a waitress and teacher at University of North Carolina.

The main character is a seventeen-year-old girl named Mclean Sweet. She lives with her father in Lakeview, the place where she was born and raised. Her parents divorced two years ago after her mother ran off with a local basketball coach. The father works for a restaurant business, traveling around the country fixing problem branches; as such he has moved from town to town over the past two years. All Mclean wants is to settle down and make friends, but every time she tries to do this it doesn’t work out because of moving so frequently.

Whenever they move, Mclean adopts a new personality. She’s been a cheerleader and an activist before, but now she wants to be true to herself. However, she doesn’t know who that person is anymore because she hasn’t had the time to figure it out when her father was ill. So she agrees with him that this time should be different and just try being herself.

Meanwhile, Mclean’s father is working on a new restaurant. It’s named Luna Blu and it serves contemporary Italian food. The manager of the restaurant is Opal, who has been running the business for years. She doesn’t take criticism well and she thinks that her restaurant is doing just fine even though they’re losing money every day. On one hand, Mclean struggles to fit in at school while her father tries to make his new restaurant successful on the other hand.

In school, Mclean tries to make friends. She meets Deb who says she’s popular and preppy but no one sits with her at lunch. Mclean also meets Riley and Heather but decides to sit with Deb because she was the first person to befriend her. Mclean realizes that everyone 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 doesn’t want to stress him out by telling him about the calls so she keeps them secret from him.

Mclean’s life at Luna Blu isn’t going well. Her father plans to shut down the restaurant because Opal is so hard to work with. Now that she’s making friends, Mclean dreads Luna Blu closing because it probably means moving town again. She’s especially annoyed because she has a crush on a boy named Dave who goes to her school. Meanwhile, Mclean gets another call from her mother about visiting for spring break—if she doesn’t visit, then her mother will change the custody agreement and force her to visit more often than once every two years. Reluctantly, Mclean decides to leave behind her father and travel out to see her mother for the break. Before leaving home though, Mclean learns some bad news: Her father wants them all to move away and live in Hawaii! He’s shutting down Luna Blu and he wants them all gone before then (especially since there are no jobs left). So now Mclean must say goodbye forever or try something else…

Mclean enjoys spending time with her mother, but she soon feels like an outsider in the new life that her mother has created. She leaves without telling anyone where she’s going and hides out at a motel called the Poseidon.