No Good About Goodbye

No Good About Goodbye
Author(s)
Publisher
Age Range
16+
Release Date
November 24, 2021
ISBN
978-1955394024
Buy This Book
      

"Brilliant...a rollicking good read. Rich with often realistically crude boy lingo, NO GOOD ABOUT GOODBYE is an utterly charming teenage LGBTQ falling-in-love adventure while simultaneously rocking an international crime storyline." -C.S. Holmes, Indiereader

Fifteen-year-old Ian Racalmuto's life is in ruins after an embassy raid in Algiers. His mother, a vodka-drunk spy, is dead. His brother, a diplomat, has vanished. And, he's lost a cremation urn containing a smartphone that could destroy the world.

Forced to live with his cantankerous grandfather in Philadelphia, Ian has seven days to find his brother and secure the phone-all while adjusting to life in a troubled urban school and dodging assassins sent to kill him.

Ian finds an ally in William Xiang, an undocumented immigrant grappling with poverty, a strict family, and abusive classmates. They make a formidable team, but when Ian's feelings toward Will grow, bombs, bullets and crazed bounty hunters don't hold a candle to his fear of his friend finding out. Will it wreck their relationship, roll up their mission, and derail a heist they’ve planned at the State Department?

Like a dime store pulp adventure of the past, No Good About Goodbye is an incautious, funny, coming-of-age tale for mature teens and adult readers.

"Brilliant...a rollicking good read. Rich with often realistically crude boy lingo, NO GOOD ABOUT GOODBYE is an utterly charming teenage LGBTQ falling-in-love adventure while simultaneously rocking an international crime storyline." -C.S. Holmes, Indiereader

Fifteen-year-old Ian Racalmuto's life is in ruins after an embassy raid in Algiers. His mother, a vodka-drunk spy, is dead. His brother, a diplomat, has vanished. And, he's lost a cremation urn containing a smartphone that could destroy the world.

Forced to live with his cantankerous grandfather in Philadelphia, Ian has seven days to find his brother and secure the phone-all while adjusting to life in a troubled urban school and dodging assassins sent to kill him.

Ian finds an ally in William Xiang, an undocumented immigrant grappling with poverty, a strict family, and abusive classmates. They make a formidable team, but when Ian's feelings toward Will grow, bombs, bullets and crazed bounty hunters don't hold a candle to his fear of his friend finding out. Will it wreck their relationship, roll up their mission, and derail a heist they’ve planned at the State Department?

Like a dime store pulp adventure of the past, No Good About Goodbye is an incautious, funny, coming-of-age tale for mature teens and adult readers.

User reviews

2 reviews
Overall rating
 
5.0
Plot
 
5.0(2)
Characters
 
5.0(2)
Writing Style
 
5.0(2)
Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)
 
N/A(0)
Already have an account? or Create an account
Spy spoof for smart kids
Overall rating
 
5.0
Plot
 
N/A
Characters
 
N/A
Writing Style
 
N/A
Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)
 
N/A
A boisterous caper tale, an action-packed spy spoof seasoned with screwball humor, popcult savvy, and genuine insight into the lives and thoughts of contemporary city kids.

Moreover, it's a blistering critique of hypocritical Christianity, organized athletics, imperial machinations, and toxic masculinity. And its spirited, precocious young protagonists are gay. What’s not to like?
Good Points
Bright, witty characters; hilarious banter; a wild ride with real heart.
Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful? 2 0
The Spy Who Came Out In the Cafeteria
(Updated: January 15, 2022)
Overall rating
 
5.0
Plot
 
N/A
Characters
 
N/A
Writing Style
 
N/A
Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)
 
N/A
This guy can really write. I've been reading YA books lately, for a variety of reasons which didn't initially include inclination, but now I am finding the good stuff. I really really loved DIma Novak's Pushing Pawns. MacKenzi Lee's Regencies are amusing and Adam Silvera keeps you reading like good chick lit. Katherine Arden and the recent debutante author Hafsah Faiza can write the genre of romancy magic fantasy historical they have chosen. (So that's me the beholder there.) But this one, like the Dima Novak, is in another class. The publisher advertizes its stuff as real old style pulp, racy, unredeemable penny dreadful shlock. The guiltiest of pleasures. But this carnival barking is both true and untrue in good ways. We kick off with a bloodbath (too comic to be sadistic or really scary, but with stakes) and as much shoot em up as anyone could want from the first moment, but there is also heart -- somewhere in the pages, if not necessarily immediately apparent in the chest of Ian the seemingly borderline sociopathic protagonist obviously baptized after the creator of James Bond -- and social consciousness. The book is at once mining a library of great pulp and doing something very unusual, a hybrid I never saw before, tho there is something of the bathos and fizzy comic incongruity -- domestic life and coming of age amidst the capers of a pulp fiction genre -- made popular by the Sopranos, Weeds, Analyze This, Last Action Hero, etc.. The romantically inexperienced teen boys meet cute when (moderately) rich boy from Spy Dynasty deftly resets poor boy's bully-busted nose with a practised battlefield flair, and the crack of the cartilege in this case provides the rom-com sparks flying. I'm tempted to call it a satirical YA Peter Temple, having recently read and hugely enjoyed Identity Theory.
Good Points
1. top-notch writing in a sharp, hardboiled style, reminiscent of great spy thrillers
2. rom com first love with real chemistry like a Billy Wilder script
3. touching, truthful, unvarnished coming out anxiety
4. wild romp spoof of a spy caper plot, with comic villains and exciting action, that sends up the model without allowing the satire to take the air out of the thrills. The stakes stay high despite the parody.
5. CHARACTERS live and breathe, from the first words they speak.
6. bona fide laugh out loud funny lines keep coming at you
7. Sentiment yes but no sentimentality, no woke hesitancies. (Lane? What lane?)
8. Honest panorama of the real conditions of contemporary life amidst the comic fantasy espionage adventure
9. Judicious deployment of interesting culture refs.
10. Emotional honesty on a human scale despite broad and heightened comic and dramatic storytelling
Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful? 3 0