The title reminded me of the song from years ago so I had to read it. I was not disappointed at all. Kasey has come home after being gone for years and this has brought back memories of why she left to begin with. Slowly the story is revealed to her friends who make up her pack, Rosemarie, Ada, & Caroline. Together these four are thick as thieves as they say and as she tells her story you the reader are pulled in as well. Won’t go into it but I liked the characters and I could see this for my wife still has three friends like this for well over forty years. Overall I liked the book a good story.

This book was not what I thought it was going to be...⁣
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Based on the title and the cover, I thought this book was going to be full of shenanigans, a Finlay Donovan type of a book. It wasn't, at least not until around 50 PERCENT.⁣
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Summary⁣
Four women take fate into their own hands in this big-hearted story of friendship, resilience and revenge on monstrous men. Taking inspiration from the infamous, empowering song, GOODBYE EARL follows four best friends through two unforgettable summers, 15 years apart.⁣
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Sounds fun, right? Well, I almost DNF'd my netgalley because it was just not keeping me engaged BUT luck would have it that I was able to get the audio the next day and managed to finish it that way. The audio was fun and the shenangians do get going around the halfway mark. I think the most fun part of reading/listening to this book was listening to the two Dixie Chicks albums that came out around the time I graduated high school -- I remembered ALL (shockingly) of the words and had an absolute ball belting out the extremely fun songs from those two albums.⁣
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Thank you @netgalley for this free copy for review!⁣
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What songs from high school (and what class? I'm Class of '99! 🙌) do you remember all the words?

I started our really enjoying this book, but I struggled to stay with it. It is well written, but I think it just is not my type of story line. I loved learning about the relationships between the women and how they connected in their childhood. Maybe there was too much jumping back and forth for me. I would have to think about what timeline I am reading about and what story line. I will try to read it again at a later time and maybe my mood will change.

I just could not get into this one. I so wanted to but it was just too predictable. I love that someone wrote a book based on this song but it just felt like there was something missing.

Wow! This book has it all. Dual timelines, small town setting, with strong female friendships taking on the patriarchy! This song (and the Chicks in general) was my high school favorite so I grabbed up this book based on the title alone. But the writing was so good, the women were REAL and had real past/current traumas that any wife/mother can identify with. Additionally, I applaud the author for how she portrayed the domestic violence plot lines with care and accuracy. Some parts were difficult to read, but it was powerful to watch the women support each other. I highly recommend this book to lovers of women’s fiction!

After loving The Half-Blown Rose, I was so excited to get approved for this ARC. However, I quickly realized these books were WAY different from one another. I loved the idea of life-long friends, female empowerment & revenge but I think the actual book setup didn't quite work for me. There were multiple POVs and two timelines. Just when I started to get invested in a character & their backstory, the next chapter would shift. It was hard to keep everyone straight at times and at about halfway through the book is when I really lost interest. I skimmed the second half and really just wasn't surprised by anything in this book. Unfortunately it wasn't for me.

Four friends meet up again, in their hometown, 15 years after high school graduation and their last unforgettable summer. The past and the present will start to intermingle and will force them to make some tough decisions that may have been the result of choices made in the past as well.

In this compelling story, based on The Chicks song by the same name, you will get a roller coaster of emotions. All while twists and turns are being thrown at you from every side.

Thank you to Grand Central Publishing & NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this book

✨ Review ✨ Goodbye Earl by Leesa Cross-Smith

I had previously read and loved Half-Blown Rose by Cross-Smith, and this was a total change of course from that book. Based in the Chicks' song Goodbye Earl, the book follows four friends in their senior year of college and fifteen year later when they're all together again in their hometown Goldie for a wedding.

The book alternates between the POVs for these four friends in the past and in the present, chronicling their loves, their lost loves, and their abusers. The book considers what it means for friends and a whole town of women to stand together to prevent abusive men from harming women in their midst. I enjoyed the last third of the book best as the plots resolved and we saw the women of Goldie unite.

The pacing was a little slow for me -- I was feeling the slog around the halfway point, and waiting for the audio to come available (and the audio made it fly by at a better pace for me). The writing also lacked some of the lyricism and magic I was expecting from Cross-Smith, but at the same time it was far more readable than Half-Blown Rose.

The book brings together the sweetness of slow summer days with your best friends and first loves when you're 17 and 18 with the baggage of relationships, sickness, loss, family struggles, etc. that comes across one's life. The book felt very bittersweet with a lots of peaks and valleys along the way.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 (3.5-3.75)
Genre: general fiction
Setting: Goldie (small town in the South)
Reminds me of: Goodbye Earl the song
Pub Date: out now!

Read this if you like:
⭕️ Goodbye Earl and the feminist empowerment of songs by The Chicks
⭕️ women getting revenge
⭕️ small town South - biscuits and pies and slow summer days

Thanks to Grand Central Publishing and #netgalley for an advanced e-copy of this book!

So I didn’t love this book but I didn’t hate it. I just think this author is hit or miss for me. Leesa’s writing is too beautiful to have mediocre story lines. After reading HALF-BLOWN ROSE and giving it 3 stars, I was apprehensive of this one also. At first, I was intrigued with why one of the girls hadn’t been back to town after so many years. You almost knew something bad happened when they were younger but to what extent. What I didn’t expect was 4 different POV’s between past and present. At first it was a bit confusing learning all of the girls and story lines. Towards the middle I started to become disinterested and then at the 43% mark is when it picks up! I thoroughly enjoyed the second half. A bit cliché (women getting revenge) but it held my attention between the revenge plot and incidents. I thought it truly represented the good and ugly of friendship. There seemed to be some filler pages in between chapter (police reports/transcripts) but I didn’t mind it. I think it gave the appeal of small town culture. Overall, a good read and just push through if you’re beginning to feel it drag. It is a warm ending ❤.

A story of four women, friends since before they could walk, two with difficult lives and not enough money. One from a hippie music making family. And one from a more traditional solidly ok middle class family. Rosemarie, Ada, Caro and Kasey: RACK. Goodbye Earl riffs of the song made famous by The Chicks involving old high school friends murdering one's husband after he beat her so badly she ended up in intensive care. I thought at first that the characters would be shallow, but they are not. The novel switches back and forth between 2019, when Kasey returns to their little southern town of Goldie for the first time since her mother died and 2004, the year the members of RACK graduated from high school. Domestic violence plays a central role in this book, as it must. Kasey grew up in a household with a violent stepfather. She's engaged now, living in New York and now, back in Goldie, she is instantly swept up into her friends' lives, spending time with a high school love, and finding out that someone they all know is in danger from a violent partner.

I enjoyed reading Goodbye Earl. It was a fast read. A good nod to the song's story of devoted friends standing up for one another. A great portrait of the town of Goldie. A nice dive into good and bad relationships/marriages. A poignant story of loss. For me, one of the most engaging parts involved the women of the town getting involved in a police investigation and each o their statements offered about what a jerk a man in town was, all his life, and that he came from several generations of jerks. So, it's also a story about stepping up and no longer accepting what has always been swept under the rug. Definitely recommend if the kind of book is appealing to you.

DNF this at 14%
There's a lot going on and I feel like too many unnecessary details for me to be able to understand the story.

Stick with it! The first 45% is slow but then it REALLY picked up. And if you’re looking for a girl-power, sisterhood, boys-be-damned read for the summer, this gives the same vibes as The Chicks song of the same title. The Chicks songs also provide the soundtrack as we watch Rosemarie, Caroline, Ada, and Kasey lives change over the course of two summers.

Thank you to the author, publisher and @NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Each of the four women in this story were unique, captivating, and someone to root for. This was nuanced and interesting and a feminist tale I really, really enjoyed!

If you instantly started singing The Chicks upon seeing this title, you’re my kind of person. And you’d have the right idea-because their music and this song’s lesson are at the root of this story, following 4 best friends over 15 years and fighting back against any “Earl” in your life.
The story follows a sisterhood of four best friends: Rosemarie, Ada, Caroline, & Kasey (or RACK as they call themselves) during the end of their senior year in 2004 and in “present day” 2019 when reunited for a wedding in their small, Southern hometown of Goldie. But secrets remain and while Kasey’s memories of her abusive stepdad resurface upon her return, she starts to recognize those same signs of abuse in one of their own. Together, they resolve not to let the Earls of the world (and in their life) get away with it.
I honestly expected a dark comedy, but this is more a novel of tight-knit friendship and a bit of a revenge. My only downside of the novel is that it felt unnecessarily long in some parts — like when you eat a large meal, you’re full and it looks like you barely made a dent?…that’s kind of how this felt at times. But still a fun read for those in for the long haul.
Thank you to Grand Central Publishing for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This is officially out now.

This was one of my most anticipated reads of the year, because I LOVE The Chicks & especially Goodbye Earl. I was expecting this to be a bit It Ends With Us-ish and make me laugh and then cry and then cry harder.

Ultimately, this book felt painfully slow to me. I’m hardcore a plot girlie, and this was largely based around character development, so I think that’s what didn’t work for me. The parts I was most excited to see played out took maybe 15-20% of the book and the rest was the girls all falling in love and reuniting and flashing back to high school. It was fine, but not my cup of tea.

Thank you NetGalley for gifting me an advanced copy of the book. All opinions are my own.

As a major fan of the og song by the dixie chicks I was immediately drawn to this title. It’s a creative, heart strings tugging story of resiliency and friendship.

GOODBYE EARL
Leesa Cross-Smith, Author

Four friends meet up again, in their hometown, 15 years after high school graduation and their last unforgettable summer. The past and the present will start to intermingle and will force them to make some tough decisions that may have been the result of choices made in the past as well.

In this compelling story, based on The Chicks song by the same name, you will get a roller coaster of emotions. All while twists and turns are being thrown at you from every side. I would give this book a good 5 out of 5 stars.

If ever there was a song with a plot that deserves a book, it's "Goodby Earl" by The Chicks. Leesa Cross-Smith uses a dual timeline to follow four friends who commit a crime and it's a wild ride. I do wish it had stuck to one timeline and/or POV as it was a little hard to follow sometimes but who doesn't love a good revenge story?

3.5 stars

Thanks to Grand Central Publishing for the copy to review.

The cover calls this a revenge novel, but that doesn't do this fierce friendship story enough justice. Anyone who has ever heard the song that gives the cover its name knows where that part of the story is going, but the journey, going back and forth between each of the four main characters and telling both the contemporary story and the one of the first summer that tested their bonds and what happened, is so much more than that. These characters are vivid and if you go into it for that and the storytelling, you'll be well primed to enjoy this one.

I am a sucker for books about revenge in the face of toxic masculinity and taking one’s power back, so I had a great time reading this! It felt familiar and nostalgic — with strong themes of sisterhood and friendship — but didn’t distract from the authors fantastic writing. This was a fantastic summer read!

Thank you to Grand Central Publishing for the arc!