by Jeff Zentner
First published 2017
Carver Briggs is sixteen and already certain he killed his three best friends. He sent a text. Mars, Eli, and Blake looked at it while driving. The crash that followed took all three of them. Now Carver moves through school carrying the weight of that message, while a judge pushes the district attorney to open a criminal investigation against him. The people who show up for Carver are not who he expected: Eli's girlfriend, who is the one person at school still willing to stand beside him; a therapist named Dr. Mendez; and Blake's grandmother, who asks Carver to spend a goodbye day with her, sharing memories and giving Blake a proper farewell. Then the other families want goodbye days too, and Carver cannot tell whether they are seeking comfort or revenge. Jeff Zentner, the award-winning author of The Serpent King, builds a story around a boy trying to survive grief, guilt, and the real possibility of prison, while figuring out whether forgiveness, including his own, is something he can actually reach.
Genres: fiction, drama, literary-fiction, contemporary, young-adult, psychological-thriller
Vibes: dark, emotional, haunting, intimate, introspective, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, grief-journey, second-chances, unlikely-allies
Period: contemporary
432 pages · Paperback · Ember
Content warnings: death, mental-illness, suicidal-ideation