Goodbye, Perfect by Sara Barnard

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 320 

Publisher: Macmillan Children's Books 

Released: 8th of February 2018 

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. 

What I Have to Say 

Sara Barnard is probably one of my favourite authors and while this book didn't blow me away quite as much as Beautiful, Broken Things or A Quiet Kind of Thunder, I still really liked it. It was really interesting to see the narrative of a teacher-student relationship from the perspective of a best friend. While obviously her choice to be loyal to her friend and keep her location a secret was obviously not the right one, I can understand how hard it can be to know what to do in this situation. 

I did feel that maybe it would have been good to see more of Bonnie before she ran away. We were left listening to Eden talk about what Bonnie was like before and how her friend seemed to be completely different to the way she thought she was, but we only really met the Bonnie who had been groomed, the Bonnie who thought she was in love and so we only had Eden's thoughts on the subject. 

I think the thing that made this book for me though was the relationships between Eden and her family. Being adopted and forming relationships with a new family is always an interesting topic to read about. It was really nice to see such a positive relationship between her and her adoptive parents and the contrast between the relationship with her biological sister and her adoptive sister. It was good to see a fresh take on the adoption subject. 

My thanks go to Macmillan and Netgalley for providing me with this copy for review.