Icelandic hairdressers are the happiest people in the world.
Bea is not an Icelandic hairdresser.
Neither is Jonah.
New to town, Bea is expecting her new best friend to be one of the girls she meets on the first day. You know the type: very cheery, very friendly, very average. But instead, the alphabet conspires to seat her next to Jonah, aka Ghost Boy, a quiet observer who hasn't made a new friend since third grade. He's not a big fan of people in general... but he's willing to make an exception for her. Maybe.
Bea and Jonah are not going to have a friendship like other people have a friendship, where it's all based on gossip and parties and what everybody else thinks. Instead, their friendship comes from truth-bound conversations, shared secrets, daring stunts, and late-night phone calls to the same old-timer radio show. They help each other and hurt each other, push away and hold close. It's not romance, exactly - but it's definitely love. And it means more to them than either one can ever really know....
For anyone who's ever entered the wonderful, treacherous, consuming, meaningful world of a true friendship, How to Say Goodbye in Robot will strike a deep and lasting chord. *
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Almost all of what I want to say about this book is said in the summary. [I promise the first three sentences make sense once you read the book.] From August of one year to October of the next, I was always entertained, always wanting to know the next bit. And I want to tell you that this was a cute story, but it was more than that. It wasn't exactly deep or cute or funny or tragic or, well, anything else that I can list. It was just... it. In a good way. It was a great blend and a great balance of these and more. It also (and I hate to say this aloud) wasn't angsty. A lot of more recent YA books have so much angst, and that's probably because we YAs have so much angst (well, some do). But just because there is a lot of YA angst doesn't mean I want to read about it. But that's just me.
So now that you've read all of that, you're going, "Well if it was so great, Silver, why is it only a nine? Huh?" The response is somewhat simple: parts of it just weren't up to par for me. Don't get me wrong, they were still good, but they just weren't quite there. That's it. But, it was still a great book, and I do recommend it.
Rating: 9/10
Age Range: Young Adult
Genre: General Fiction/Realistic Fiction
Publication Date: October 1, 2009
Publisher: Scholastic Press
*summary from inside flap
-SilverLining
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