When I first read the series, it wasn't long after publication. I was 15 and the prime demographic for it. These girls were my peers. As a girl with very little socialization or friends at this time in her life, when I read these books it felt like being part of a real friend group.👖

I've read and reread this series multiple times in my life. A part of me feels like I've grown up with these girls and I've always loved revisiting them...

When I came across this book a few years ago I was floored because as much as I love this series I had no idea it existed. Somehow in all my shelf browsing and library visits this got past me. So I added it to my shelf and said to myself my next reread of the series I'll add this one on and get the conclusion to the series I never knew I needed...

As I've read and reread these girls have been solidified in my brain where they end in Forever In Blue, in a bubble of growth to still come, but optimism, and hope, and an everlasting love and friendship that will continue with them forever. 

So, on my summer reading journey this year I once again revisited the Septembers, and FINALLY I was going to read the last book. I just knew what I was getting into. I was going to get this amazing final summer with our girls who are navigating the world on their own. Maybe they'll have kids, jobs, and ordinary and extraordinary life events that'll play into the plot but ultimately they'll all come back together again, like they always do. Yes, life will be hectic but they'll find their way back to each other like always, right? Right?

I'm so glad I didn't read this book until now. I'm glad they lived in the bubble I made for them as long as they did.... I'm glad I didn't read this part of the series until my thirties, because that time has passed organically for me and I'm their age when it's taking place rather than the twenty-one years of age I would have been at publication. And somehow I never even got a hint of spoiler in all the time I didn't know of its existence or after, that's what I think I'm most grateful for...



Spoilers beyond this point 👉

I was absolutely floored reading this book. It had me sobbing. 😭 It kept laying itself out and I dumbly just kept reading along, like no, that's certainly not what's happening, clearly this is going to be a joke. I didn't pick up one of my true crime or thriller books, so there is no way what I think I'm reading, is what I'm reading.

It opens up so normal, like all the books before. I feel like I should've suspected when everyone was able to get together so easily but I never did... I wasn't looking for clues. Tibby isn't at the airport, okay. Tibby isn't at the house, but it's cool she's definitely been here. And sure, they call the police but certainly that's not actually going to play into the story.

“Something is wrong,” Bridget said. They’d waited implicitly until midnight to say so. They’d waited for Bee to be the one to say it.

"The hand of Tibby so close and yet not here." 

What do you mean identify the body!? 
WHAT AM I REREADING!?!?‼️❓️⁉️

First reaction: What!? Why this way?
Our girl who hates change and acts so viscerally to change goes basically no contact with everyone and Australia isn't even an integral point to the plot???? Why??? 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

How did Ann pick her? How did she know?

"No, that drowned swimmer must belong to somebody else’s tragedy. It didn’t feel like theirs."

"You are my friend. You are here and I need you. That was living and true. You are gone. You are not coming back. That was also true.
Between alive and dead there was no common ground."

"And now what? If happiness depended on their being together, then what could you possibly say about this day?"

I’m sorry we’re still alive, Bridget thought. She didn’t begrudge Alice the feeling she was almost certainly having as she looked at her daughter’s friends. Plenty of times Bridget had wished every other mother dead if she could have kept hers. You love us, I know, but when it comes down to it, we are other people’s daughters.

“I’m writing this down, because it is going to be hard for me to say it. Because this is probably our last time just us. See, I can write that down, but I don’t think I can say it. I’m not doing this to say goodbye, though I know that has to be part of it. I’m doing it to say thank you for all we have had and done and been for one another, to say I love you for making this life of mine what it is. Leaving you is the hardest thing I have to do. But the thing is, the best parts of me are in you, all three of you. You are who I am, and what I cherish in myself stays on in you.”

"Fate had been kind to them before this, doling out traumas not all at once but one at a time, so that whenever something awful was happening to one, the others were there to help. The explosions came at them from the outside while they huddled together for protection.
This explosion came from the middle of the huddle. This was an inside job."

"The past cried for the present that was nothing. Tibby was too deeply incorporated within her for Lena to go on without her."

For everyone who can't understand why they react the way they do:

"Tibby, who was not fond of change, had once told Bridget that the present, no matter what it brought, couldn’t change the past. The past was set and sealed.
But that wasn’t true. Now every time Bridget glanced behind her, the past, whether near or distant, opened and morphed and reset into images and uncertainties she’d never even thought of. If this could happen to Tibby, then nothing about their friendship, about their past, could be trusted. It seemed ironic to disagree with Tibby at such a time, but she didn’t believe their past anymore and was extra sorry that Tibby herself had been the one to prove its frailty."

For everyone who says "aren't they supposed to be 30?" or, "They didn't mature at all!"
What are you talking about? What do you actually mean? They've all got jobs, live separate lives, and pay bills. Because they still have the same faults and insecurities they aren't grown? Seriously? I actually saw a review where they said, "didn't we do these flaws in the last books?" 😅 💁‍♀️🤦‍♀️

And for the "it's unrealistic for someone to stay with their teenage romance", one study shows up to 25% of women marry their first love. And the way these guys are written, why wouldn't you want that for them? 

Or my favorite, "why are they completely shutting down with grief over someone they haven't even spoke to in 2+ years?"

What? Was this the only book you read???

I think it's acknowledged throughout the entire book they all still have growing up to do. They weren't "done". That's the whole point of Tibby's death is to spur them into the growth they needed. It's also used to show how they deal with and come back from a loss they never imagined.

Inevitably and without meaning to they take their friendships for granted and in turn knowing its always there for them, they don't branch out and make lasting relationships outside of it. 

Tibby's death is just one scenario among a million scenarios of how someone could die. This is ultimately the one she picked. The more I sat with this the more I realized it's entirely possible and makes as much sense as most death of anyone who is fairly young. 

I saw one review that said there is a universe where they all meet in Greece together and Tibby passes surrounded by love in hospice with them all there. 
(I love this story and it equally crushes me) 

But for every story like this there is also the story we got where these soul mates were so close to seeing each other, just one last time, and don't because something else happened at the last minute that no one could control... I'd argue that it's a better death than the one her body designed for her and she knew her friends were on their way to her while it happened... 

"For the first time she saw that the nurse’s name was Tabitha."
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

"Bridget stared at the girl in astonishment—the large hazel eyes, the pointy face, the serious mouth. This was a person she knew. Death was life and the present was the past. She’d gone back to her earliest childhood to find her friend again.
Brian took the little girl’s hand and led her forward. “Bee, this is Bailey. This is Tibby’s and my daughter.”
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

"She needed to tell them that Bailey was in the world, brightening it by the hour."

"Feeling slightly dazed, she walked back to the kitchen of the farmhouse and handed Brian the keys. He didn’t take them.
“How is it?” he asked.
“It is perfect,” she said, a little breathlessly.
“That’s what Tibby thought you would say.”

Tibby gave Bridget a home.....she gave them all a home.

“Lena, do you want to stay still and I’ll get on the next plane and come to you? Or do you want to come to me?”
Lena sucked back tears, and though her voice was a mess she answered with confidence. “You stay. I’ll come to you.” 🥰

“Hey,” he said. “It’s someday.” He said the last word in Greek.

It feels like they finally earned their love story...😍

“How do you feel about it?” he asked soberly.
“I feel like we are its parents.”
“And is this something you are sure you want?”
Tears had been building up and she let them fall. “Yes. It really is.” She couldn’t remember not wanting it. The person who hadn’t wanted it was a stranger. “I’ve had a while to think about this, and I admit I didn’t take to it right away. But I know, I know it’s what I want.” She wiped her eyes and gathered her hair in a bunch. “The question is, is this something you want?”
He moved toward her on the creaky daybed. He put his arms around her waist and pulled her onto his lap. He pressed her hard against his chest. He put his face in her neck.
“This is something I want,” he said, and she could hear the emotion in his voice. “This is something I’ve always wanted.”
💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗

"The discovery of Bailey, a little girl plucked out of her memory, was all the more extraordinary because of her mother’s loss. You gave us a way to keep loving you, Tib. You must know this child will never be without mothers."

The only thing that would make it more perfect is Mrs. Graffman meeting Bailey. 😭😭😭


"Lena recognized in each moment of that day, maybe in her happiness more than anyone’s, the hand of an artist. Tibby had spent the last fifteen years learning to write a script, and this was her gift to them, her masterpiece."
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

"Carmen felt the tears slide onto the pillow as she lay in this bed with the window open and the chirping coming from both grass and trees, with Bridget and Eric in the little house across the yard, and Lena and Kostos in the barn, and Brian and Bailey in the house next door. What a joyful context.
She remembered so well Tibby’s distress the summer they left for college, troubling over the notion of home. What would hold them together? Where would it ever be again?
Carmen did feel strangely, for the first time in her adult life, like she was home."

"A long time ago Tibby had a friend named Bailey, for whom little Bailey is named. The first Bailey died tragically young, and her death struck Tibby hard. But I once heard Tibby say that before Bailey died she’d left Tibby everything she needed to live a happy life, if only Tibby was wise enough to take it.
And now we are the ones wisely taking what Tibby left for us. I guess you could say Tibby’s magic is deep and lasting. I don’t know when any of us will go.
But I know this. We’re ready to move forward again in our way. Together or apart, no matter how far apart, we live in one another. We go on together."



Quotable Quotations 🗣📢


“I lose everything here,” she said.
He couldn’t really know what she meant, but he thought it over carefully nonetheless.
“Maybe you gain things too,” he said.
“Maybe I do,” she said. She considered that and shook her head. “Nothing I get to keep.”

"So why be disappointed by wishes you would not want to come true? That was the road to unhappiness if ever there was one, and she had traveled it extensively."

"Lena wished that love were something you could flip on and off. You could turn it on when you felt good about yourself and worthy of it and generous enough to return it. You could flip it off when you needed to hide or self-destruct and had nothing at all to give."

"She sat on the windowsill of her bedroom and looked out at the sparkling blue water of the Caldera. The lost city of Atlantis was supposed to be under there. She imagined Tibby under there. She imagined the Traveling Pants under there. She imagined the ring that Kostos had bought for her when he still thought he loved her under there.
Her vision of the world under the water represented a beautiful stillness, a version of heaven. It was the lost city of Lena, her alternate universe, the life she yearned for but didn’t get to have."

"She knew from long-ago experience that when you were uncertain and if you were courageous enough to let her in, a real friend could do a world of good."

"Today, yesterday, the day before, maybe tomorrow, I walk with Tibby."

"In reality I guess you would say it’s me who goes on without Tibby, but I can’t quite seem to do that. It feels more like she’s gone somewhere without me."

“Anatole and I had barely kissed. Most couples in the history of the world had barely kissed. It’s when the world changed and people started doing everything else, that’s when everybody got divorced.”
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

“You get older and you learn there is one sentence, just four words long, and if you can say it to yourself it offers more comfort than almost any other. It goes like this.… Ready?”
“Ready.”
“ ‘At least I tried.’ ”

When we argue for our limitations,
we get to keep them.
                —Evelyn Waugh

"Carmen realized you could turn almost anyone into a mother if you acted like enough of a baby."

"Her heart was the most exclusive club in history: you had to know Carmen Lowell on the first day of her life in order to join.
It wasn’t that her heart was small. She knew that. It was big. If anything, it loved too violently, too much. But she couldn’t expand its membership. If she asked herself honestly, she’d have had to admit she didn’t really believe she could."