the last time we say goodbye book review

As the weeks go by, Alexis confronts her future plans, family issues, and cautiously opens up to a few people about how she’s been feeling. Alexis tries to figure out if Ty is trying to give her some sort of message. She’s alienated from her friends at the moment-they’re still trying to be there for her, especially her ex-boyfriend, Steven, but she just can’t deal with anything or anyone. She could talk to her therapist about this, but she doesn’t want to sound crazy. But when Alexis starts seeing flashes of Ty-in the mirror, in the backseat of the car-she starts to wonder if she’s hallucinating or seeing a ghost. They’re grieving, after all, and feeling like a loved one is still around isn’t that uncommon.

When her mother says she still feels Tyler in the house-that she smelled his cologne one night, out of nowhere-Alexis doesn’t think much of it. She’s going to therapy, refusing to take medication to help with the depression and panic attacks (more on this topic in my Sunday Reflections post), and keeping a journal. (Feb.In Cynthia Hand’s The Last Time We Say Goodbye, high school senior Alexis is struggling to figure out how to go on in the aftermath of her brother Ty’s suicide. Although Lexie’s movement from paralysis to possibility is a little quick, her range of emotions is believable, and Hand is effective at showing how guilt can impede one’s ability to move through tragedy. Hand’s writing can be stiff, and Lexie’s ex-boyfriend, Steven, is a too-perfect cipher, but she persuasively conveys the aftermath of suicide and the ways those left behind struggle with grief, anger, and guilt. During the two-month span over which the novel is set, Lexie sees a therapist (reluctantly), reunites with an old friend, withstands another suicide in her Nebraska high school, and learns more about what Ty was thinking. When the book opens, seven weeks after Ty’s death, Lexie’s grades have slipped, she has broken up with her boyfriend, and she feels like she might be going crazy.

Then her younger brother, Ty, commits suicide. Hand (the Unearthly trilogy) shifts to realistic fiction with the story of Lexie, a math star and unashamed nerd whose biggest problems are the aftereffects of her parents’ divorce and wondering whether she’ll get into MIT.

The last time we say goodbye book review