The minute I finished Jeff Zentner’s Goodbye Days, it solidified Zentner’s talent for wordsmithing and character development for me after the explosive beauty of his debut (and William C. Morris award winning) The Serpent King. Move over because Josie and Delia aka Rayne and Delilah will absolutely melt your heart and you’ll fall in love with Zentner’s words again. I’m going to venture a guess that including “midnite” in the title is an indicator that like the public access channel watchers of Josie and Delia’s horror show, you’ll be up past your bedtime to finish it as I did. And not because their old-timey, horror-movie-watching-commentary television show is truly scary enough to keep you up at night but because you don’t want to leave the characters because they become your friends. You want them to succeed where they might fail and gets the answers to the questions that have gone unanswered.

And it’s all because Zentner has created the most beautiful, feeling female characters. Yet while they are the title characters and their bond and banter is precious, the romantic lead, Lawson, is my memorable character. There was nothing more lovely than reading his hesitance at asking Josie out or asking her to attend a bout. And when he tells her that he wants her to see him as a champion because that is how he sees himself is a positive message about a growth mindset in which you envision your success and then live it out. Loss happens, but pancakes happen too. And life goes on.

And the commentary Zentner provides about life is precisely why his books are Post-it material as evidenced by my initial tweet: within the first chapter, I already earmarked a quote to return to. So while it’s hard to pick just one, a memorable quote that sets up Delia for her eventual critical decision to seek out her dad: “I’ve come to believe that everyone gets five or six perfect days in their life. Days with not a single wrong note or thorn, days that ripen like a peach in your memory as years pass. Every time you go to bite it, it’s juicy and sweet.” Won’t every reader stop and think about whether they’ve already lived a perfect day and what it was like and then savor the thought of a few more ahead of them?

So when epic fails happen and a few sweet successes, readers will take the good and the bad because they’re along for the ride with these vividly-detailed, persistent young women and it’s exactly the times when it’s hard to move on that scenes like the last pages of the book completely melt hearts.

I can’t, nor would I want to give away too much about the ending, but a picture is worth a thousand words and this was my Instagram post just minutes after finishing the book… a tear-stained page that other than the saccharine visit to Lawson’s house by Josie post-fight is the most memorable scene. Delia is struggling hard because abandonment seems to be a trend from people in her life and it’s the most critical one that comes through for her. Like memorable names such as Beyonce or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, you only needs to say “Dolores Darkwood” and I will be putty in your hands.

Ultimately, this story of a bond of friendship in which both hold a piece of the puzzle that completes the other, pushes the other, motivates the other, lifts up the other, it’s easily compatible with the likes of girl-positive stories like Seafire by Natalie C. Parker that pass the Bechdel test. My advice is to be first in line this February 2019 to purchase a copy, but be sure to have taken a nap because you’ll be up all night to finish it.