Beach Reads 4.0

How to Say Goodbye in Robot is an evocative, moody, and thoroughly delightful young adult novel about a couple of offbeat teens finding each other, and themselves in the process. Beatrice and Jonah aren't vampires or wizards. They're just kids—in Baltimore, it turns out—forging a deep friendship characterized by empathy and an appreciation for benign escapism, personal eccentricity, and late night radio. There's some profanity and underage drinking in Natalie Standiford's story, but her characters aren't defined by those things, just as they aren't defined by the gossip, cliques, and family tragedies in their midst. They seem above such things, because what they're experiencing is actually an unspoken love for one another. Standiford, to her great credit, resists romantic clichés and a pat ending in favor of something more complex, nuanced, and heart tugging. Beatrice and Jonah's excursion to Ocean City makes the book an even better "beach read," and Standiford gets extra credit for her website's fab "mystery page," which spotlights sights and sounds that are mentioned in the book.