My rating: 3.75/5 stars
Genre: Young Adult, Fiction // TW: suicide, depression, grief

“I’m working on accepting that sometimes we can’t put things back the way they were. Sometimes we can’t fix what’s been broken. Sometimes we can’t get the answers we need.”

Where Was Goodbye

It’s been six weeks since Julian died by suicide and Karmen is struggling to come to terms with his death. She can’t believe she’ll never see her brother again, she can’t understand why he’s gone, and worst of all, she hates that everyone around her expects her to go ‘back to normal’. How can she care about school at a time like this? Why does it seem as if she’s being punished for grieving? 

Karmen is determined to find out everything that was going on in Julian’s life before he died – she thinks that if she can retrace his actions over the last year, that she might be able to understand what he was thinking, what he was feeling. But the more time she spends searching for answers amongst his professors, his peers, his left-behind items…the more Karmen loses herself. 

Reading this made my heart wince – on one hand, I wanted answers too. I was hopeful for Karmen. With every new lead she’d find, I too would be curious about whether this would provide more clarity, more closure. But deep down, you know that there are things that can never be answered, you know that whatever answers you do find, will never be enough.

Janice Lynn Mather does such a great job of showing how hard it can be to navigate devastating loss. The guilt that is birthed out of existing, carrying on. How grief can grind you to a halt or leave you unable to sit still. How grief can be avoidant or all-consuming. How grief is layered, and complex and can show up differently for everyone. 

 “It’s a tremendous weight..being the one left behind.” 

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for sending me an advanced readers copy of this book. ‘Where Was Goodbye’ by Janice Lynn Mather is out on April 30th, 2024