Goodbye Stranger
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
Bridge has always been a bit of an oddball, but since she recovered from a serious accident, she's found fitting in with her friends increasingly hard. Tab and Em are getting cooler and better and they don't get why she insists on wearing novelty cat ears every day. Bridge just thinks they look good. It's getting harder to keep their promise of no fights, especially when they start keeping secrets from each other.
Sherm wants to get to know Bridge better. But he’s hiding the anger he feels at his grandfather for walking out.
And then there is another girl, who is struggling with an altogether more serious set of friendship troubles...
Told from interlinked points of view, this is a bittersweet story about the trials of friendship and growing up.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bridget Barsamian accidentally skated into traffic at age eight, and this brush with death has made her an uncommonly introspective seventh-grader. A tight triumvirate, Bridge and her friends Tab and Em have sworn upon a Twinkie never to fight, but now Em's curves are attracting boy interest (and a request for a risqu photo), while Tab's attentions are turning toward feminism and social justice. Meanwhile, Bridge has a new friend, Sherm; his share of the story unspools in letters to his estranged grandfather, who left Sherm's beloved Nonna after 50 years of marriage. Then there is an unnamed high school age character, whose second-person chapters take place on Valentine's Day, months in the future. Keeping readers off-balance is a Stead hallmark, but it doesn't work quite as successfully here as it did in When You Reach Me and Liar and Spy, perhaps because the mystery narrator and the people she interacts with aren't as fleshed out as everyone else. That said, this memorable story about female friendships, silly bets, different kinds of love, and bad decisions is authentic in detail and emotion another Stead hallmark. Ages 10 up.
