GIVEAWAY + REVIEW Goodbye For Now by Laurie Frankel @lauriefrankel @doubledaypub

August 4, 2012 By Mary 43 Comments

Book Description

Publication Date: August 7, 2012

In the spirit of ONE DAY, comes a fresh and warmhearted love story for the 21st century. Sometimes the end is just the beginning . . .

Sam Elling works for an internet dating company, but he still can’t get a date. So he creates an algorithm that will match you with your soul mate. Sam meets the love of his life, a coworker named Meredith, but he also gets fired when the company starts losing all their customers to Mr. and Ms. Right.

When Meredith’s grandmother, Livvie, dies suddenly, Sam uses his ample free time to create a computer program that will allow Meredith to have one last conversation with her grandmother. Mining from all her correspondence—email, Facebook, Skype, texts—Sam constructs a computer simulation of Livvie who can respond to email or video chat just as if she were still alive. It’s not supernatural, it’s computer science.

Meredith loves it, and the couple begins to wonder if this is something that could help more people through their grief. And thus, the company RePose is born. The business takes off, but for every person who just wants to say good-bye, there is someone who can’t let go.

In the meantime, Sam and Meredith’s affection for one another deepens into the kind of love that once tasted, you can’t live without. But what if one of them suddenly had to? This entertaining novel, delivers a charming and bittersweet romance as well as a lump in the throat exploration of the nature of love, loss, and life (both real and computer simulated). Maybe nothing was meant to last forever, but then again, sometimes love takes on a life of its own.

About the Author

LAURIE FRANKEL is the author of two novels, GOODBYE FOR NOW and THE ATLAS OF LOVE. She lives with her husband, son, and border collie in Seattle, but she’s originally from Maryland. She is also a baseball fan, a soup maker, a theater lover, a yoga practicer, a comma expert, and a huge reader. Plus, she loves book clubs, so if you’d like her to visit or chat with yours, just shoot her an email. Welcome!!

Details

Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Doubleday (August 7, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385536186
ISBN-13: 978-0385536189

SOURCE: PUBLISHER

MY THOUGHTS

ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT

Computer programming genius Sam has written THE perfect script for his job at an internet dating site. The only problem: it is too perfect and threatens to put the company out of business since it can match you up with the love of your life with one try. He gets fired for this, but not before he tests it out on himself and finds his soul mate in Meredith, a marketing executive with the same firm. The love is perfectly intense and they quickly move into together. Meredith’s grandmother. Livvie, dies suddenly and she wishes she could have said goodbye. Sam comes to the rescue and uses the script he wrote for match making, adjusts it and comes up with something that they nickname “Dead Mail”. The mail service, now named DePose, predicts what the deceased would have said based on previous conversations.

When the two realize that the program is helping Meredith through her grief they begin to test it on others that are bereaved and hit gold. Everything is going well until the press kicks in and they are painted as profiting from other’s grief. Sam’s analytical mind can’t comprehend the hatred spewed at him by the media and starts to retreat further into himself. Then catastrophe happens and Sam becomes a user of DePose himself. That is as much as I will tell you about the plot. Just to say that this is just gorgeously written with humor, wit and touches of wistfulness — I can’t think of another was to explain this but the whole story is just wonderful!

I know this book has been compared to One Day but this is so much better. My reading group pre-ordered that when it first came out in the UK and as I predicted, it was made into a movie. I think this would be an awesome movie since the dialogue is all there. I am a giant dialogue fanatic and this romance is just so sweet and pitch perfect for me. There are lots of great minor characters that try to answer that huge question about the afterlife. Just like in life they never actually do find an answer but everyone feels better at the end.

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