Goodbye Stranger is a lovely lyrical story about friendships changing and peer group pressure.  The story is told from three different points of view – Bridge, Sherm and a mystery girl who we don’t find out about until the end of the book.  Everyone is keeping secrets!

‘Thirteen broken bones and a punctured lung.  You must have been put on this Earth for a reason to have survived it.’

Bridge is an oddball.  She is a doodler.  She wears black Halloween cat ears every day.  And she survived a serious accident when she was younger.

Ever since she missed a year of school to recover, she’s found fitting in with her best friends Emily and Tabitha difficult.  They promised never to fight, but that’s hard when they start keeping secrets from each other.

Sherm wants to get to know Bridge better.  But he’s also hiding a secret.

And then there is another mystery girl, who is struggling with an even more serious problem…

Rebecca Stead has won book awards for some of her previous books, and Goodbye Stranger could easily be another.