When I first came across Six Goodbye We Never Said I was intrigued, not only by the cover, but the concept as well. Grief is a subject that we rarely discuss because it makes so many people uncomfortable and brings up feelings that so often we are told to keep inside. Not only do we rarely talk about it in public settings, but we rarely see this topic touched on in such a vulnerable way in fictional literature, at least in my experience. All that being said, I knew that this was a book that I wanted to add to my collection and experience for myself. Of course that excitement was amplified when I was asked to take part in this blog tour!

Without giving away too much of the story, we meet Naima at a difficult point in her life. Her father has passed away during his tour of duty as a Marine and has recently been cremated. Her stepmother, Nell, is in the process of taking her and her father's ashes to her grandparents house. While trying to work through her grief, she's also working through her General Anxiety Disorder, her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and her suicide attempt the summer before. How is she supposed to survive without her father around? How could he leave her like this?

At the same time, we meet Dew, who has been waiting for the opportunity to meet Naima since the moment her father talked about her when they met last summer. He truly believes that Naima is his soulmate and the one person who can understand the grief he's going through as well since losing his parents. He loves his foster family without a doubt, but it seems like just when he begins to be happy, he enters a crowd of people and it triggers a panic attack related to his parents as if he's forgetting them and disrespecting their memory. There's something about being able to talk to someone who truly understand what you're going through because they're going through it too.

Naima has no clue what she's in for when she meets Dew, but you can be sure she's in for quite the ride.

What I really enjoyed about this book were the voicemails and emails between Naima and her father. They were very personal and you could feel not only the love that they had for each other, but the hurt and anger that Naima felt as well. Including those in the book added a special touch to what I was reading and I think that it was a great idea. The other thing that I enjoyed was that this really was not a love story. This isn't a romance. I think sometimes we as readers and authors look for romance in a book such as this one to bring up some comfortability and also to have an uplifting moment between characters. You can't always find yourself in romance. More to the point, guys and girls can be friends without it turning into a romantic relationship and I think that Candace portrayed that very well. I struggled to get through Dew's point of view a lot of times and the writing felt a bit disjointed, but I still really enjoyed the read. It brought up a few uncomfortable feelings for me grief wise, but I think that was a good thing.

I think this was a very raw book that showed a lot of honesty. It isn't a light read by any means, but it was a different read for me and took me out of my comfort zone, which was great. It may not have been perfect, but it was still worth the read.