{Blog Tour} Goodbye, Perfect by Sara Barnard

Goodbye, Perfect by Sara Barnard

Released: 8th January

Published by: Pan Macmillan Australia

Genre: YA Contemporary

Source: Publisher

Pages: 320

My Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

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When I was wild, you were steady . . . Now you are wild - what am I?

Eden McKinley knows she can’t count on much in this world, but she can depend on Bonnie, her solid, steady, straight-A best friend. So it’s a bit of a surprise when Bonnie runs away with the boyfriend Eden knows nothing about five days before the start of their GCSEs. Especially when the police arrive on her doorstep and Eden finds out that the boyfriend is actually their music teacher, Mr Cohn.

Sworn to secrecy and bound by loyalty, only Eden knows Bonnie’s location, and that’s the way it has to stay. There’s no way she’s betraying her best friend. Not even when she’s faced with police questioning, suspicious parents and her own growing doubts. As the days pass and things begin to unravel, Eden is forced to question everything she thought she knew about the world, her best friend and herself.

Thank you to Pan Macmillan Australia for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

Goodbye Perfect portrays a complex situation between best friends and the secret between them which spirals out of control. Illicit relationships between teachers and students have been on the newsfeeds on a number of occasions, and this book goes some way into analysing the fallout and consequences of police involvement through media coverage. Aside from the investigation is a glimpse into Eden's family life and how her own relationships are influenced by how she feels about Bonnie's actions.

It was of course frustrating to read in the beginning how Eden truly struggled with telling the authorities what she knew about the scandal, but you can see how Barnard has written this story in the hopes that it reads authentically. While this drama surrounding Bonnie's relationship with their music teacher was the main plot point as Eden questioned her loyalty and who to trust, there was the other side of the book which was more heartwarming. It would have been interesting to delve deeper into the history behind Eden's adoptive family, but even so it was a great point of character development to see how she interacted with her older sister over the course of the novel.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Friendship, family, and the consequences of a relationship which should never have happened all converge in this YA contemporary novel which questions how far you'd go to protect the secret of someone you care about.