As bestselling fantasy romance author Jodi Meadows’ smart, funny, perfectly paced Bye Forever, I Guess, opens, 13-year-old Ingrid is in the waning moments of her so-called friendship with Rachel, a master manipulator who loves to make Ingrid feel less-than.
Rachel has certainly succeeded—but much less often lately, perhaps because Ingrid is going online, where she enjoys a cyber-life that offers a welcome contrast to Rachel’s lunch table drama. Ingrid runs an anonymous Scrollr account, Bye Forever, I Guess, a fun compendium of wrong-number texts that boasts hundreds of thousands of followers. And she’s made a dear friend, Lorren, via hours of enthusiastically playing the MMORPG Ancient Tomes Online and sharing their devotion to a book series called the Essa Lightborne Chronicles.
Now, eighth grade’s beginning in the small town of Deer Hill, Virginia, and Ingrid’s ready to bring some of her online mojo IRL. She has a supportive, communicative relationship with her grandma (who runs a popular YouTube channel, Yarn Star), but she’s still lonely at school and Lorren lives 500 long miles away. New kids Alyx and Oliver seem promising, but Rachel’s meanness and Ingrid’s awkwardness add up to lunchtime in the library for the latter, where she despairs of finding the in-person connections she craves.
Then, a misdirected text from a boy who goes by Traveler pops up, and thanks to lots of ensuing witty text exchanges, a new online friendship—and a crush!—blossoms. But something nags at Ingrid: Traveler’s original text was directed to a “Rachel.” It couldn’t be Ingrid’s Rachel . . . could it? As she strives to find the answer to that nauseating question, Ingrid excitedly prepares for an Essa Lightborne event and ponders the vagaries of longing to be closer to someone she might not truly know: “I’d fastened my heart to a boy I could only half have, and I wanted more.”
Bye Forever, I Guess makes an excellent case for wanting more for ourselves in all areas of our lives, and for insisting on being seen, even if it’s awkward or scary at first. Meadows’ middle grade debut is a well-written, winning coming-of-age tale with loads of hilarity, empathy and heart.
