Synopsis—Birdie Greenwing has been at a loose end ever since her beloved twin sister and husband passed away. Too proud and stubborn to admit she is lonely, Birdie’s world has shrunk. But then some new neighbours move in to the house next door.

Jane has come to Brighton for a fresh start, away from her ferociously protective mother Min. While Jane finds it hard to stand up for herself, her daughter Frankie has no problem telling people what she does and doesn’t want. Ada Kowalski has come to England to follow her dreams, but her new life is harder than she expected.

When a series of incidents brings their lives crashing together, the three find that there is always more to a person than meets the eye …


My thoughts —-
These characters jumped from the page with joy . The occupants of Shrubland road in Brighton began to capture your hearts from the beginning. Although the story is about Birdie who is fabulous Min had my heart she was an amazing character so funny and honest ! From Connie the volunteer at the hospital cafe with her incredible mugs pizza slut and many more to the polish shop and the men who adore Ada so many believable characters. I also loved reading about Brighton it’s a place I know so well so for me this gave such credence to the story. I have not read dog days yet but i definitely will it is on my shelf. It’s safe to say this was a fabulous read. Go read it!!!

Such a delightful book despite some sad issues raised.
The differing relationships between mothers and daughters are shared, the lives of strong independent women are revealed and the book covers loneliness and love.
The characters are engaging and the book flows. You just want to keep reading to find out what happens next to the various women.

What a fabulous book 🩷

“Grief is love with nowhere to go after all”

All the feels, heartwarming, with incredible characters, strong, sensitive, caring,
You get so invested in them, just delightful.

You’ll cry, you’ll laugh, you’ll be left wondering why you’re not part of their community, and how to go about getting there!

A powerful story, thought provoking and compelling, a beauty on grief, love, family, friendship, human connections, but more importantly about life.

Just wonderful - make sure to pick up your copy and recommend it to everyone !

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my copy of this e-arc.

This book unfortunately just wasn’t for me. I couldn’t connect with all the POVs and was just a bit too slow paced

What a beautiful book. Women and misfits everywhere should read this.
A round up of people living their own lives in one community, until a series of events brings them together.
I laughed and cried and probably identified with parts of all of them. I moved near to Brighton two years ago, and knew the landmarks in the book too, which just made it slightly more special.
A fantastic follow-up to Dog days

Goodbye Birdie Greenwing was an emotional , interesting story. It's not my usual sort of book but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my ARC.

Birdie Greenwing never got over the deaths of her beloved husband and her twin sister. She has wandered through the days, alone apart from Audrey her rescue dog. When she is told she has terminal cancer she little realises that her remaining days are going to be quite different from the days before. Jane lives next door with Frankie her twelve year old daughter. Jane is a nurse & has always wanted to live in Brighton & have a bit of a break from Min- her overbearing mother; who is also lonely. For Jane, it is hard going, especially as neuro-diverse Frankie (quite my favourite character!!)hates the before & after school clubs- she is NOT a club joining person (might have changed her mind if there had been a taxidermy club!) Ada is a doctor specialising in oncology- she was the one who had to break the news to Birdie. She is Polish & dreadfully homesick. The local Polish shop seems to be her only socialisation. Told from various perspectives we see these people form relationships & become part of each others lives. There are a lot of laugh out loud moment as well as some heart-breaking ones.

Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read & review this lovely book. I miss them all already!

I knew, as soon as I read Ericka Waller’s brilliant debut, Dog Days, that she was an author to watch. And happily, I couldn’t have been more prescient.

No sign of second novel jitters here. Goodbye, Birdie Greenwing is a triumph — of characterisation, of immersive storytelling, and of lusciously lyrical prose. It’s one of my favorite reads of 2024 and will almost certainly end up in my top ten at the end of the year.

Set once again in the seaside town of Brighton, it’s the story of three women, each with their own troubled history but all sharing an overwhelming loneliness that makes them fearful of their future: elderly widow Birdie, Polish oncologist Ada, and nurse and single mum Jane.

When we first meet them, little do they know that their small, separate worlds are about to collide. What follows is a poignant, heartwarming tale of serendipity, found family and sisterhood. It will deliver healing for one, redemption for another and a final hurrah for the third.

For the time it took me to read this book, these three damaged women took full possession of both my heart and my mind. Waller reveals them layer by layer — their secrets, guilt and sorrows — until we know and understand them as well as we know ourselves.

It’s rare, as a reader, to feel a true intimacy with fictional characters, but when it happens, it’s a truly wonderful thing. I flinched at every wound and warmed at every small moment of friendship, unburdening and hope.

While Birdie, Ada and Jane are the undeniable stars of this novel, Waller’s prose glitters just as brightly. Rich and luxurious, it’s a smorgasbord of metaphor, so inspired in its imagining as to genuinely take your breath away.

We know from the beginning how this book will end, and while this tinges its reading with sadness, the effect is of adding to rather than detracting from its overall enjoyment.

A beautiful, inspiring story. What heights will Waller take us to next?

This was an endearing, heartwarming tale of three women reclaiming their lives.
Birdie has gone through loss and never fully recovered, with her own failing health now hitting her. She rediscovers that life is worth living.
Ada spends her days telling people how long they have to live, and then goes home to a shell, with a new intern at work, and a new found appreciation for running, she discovers its ok to let people in.
Jane is trying to work and raise a neurodiverse child while hiding her own secrets. With a sister avoiding her and a mum who she's left to start a new life but haunts her daily tasks, she needs to learn how to be herself and how to say no.
Together, these three women, their family and friends, come together in a delightful tale of life.
I finished the book in 2 days, I just didn't want to put it down.
I did tear up a couple of times, but it was happy tears.
It's a lovely read.

This is my favourite book of the year so far. A lovely story of female friendship. Three lonely women living on the same street in Brighton brought together by accidents. Birdie receives terrible news from her oncologist Ada, but it knocks her out of the cloud of grief and guilt she's been living in for 8 years. Her new neighbours, Jane and 12 year old daughter Frankie, come to her rescue and Frankie is able to get through to her. Ada meanwhile has her own guilt about leaving her parents in Poland, and hasn't assimilated to life outside of work. Jane is also feeling guilty about moving away from her mother, Min. With a supporting cast of colleagues and the local Polish shop owners these women gradually thaw. Some humorous moments, especially with Connie and the coffee mugs. I stayed awake into the early hours to finish this- the characters had drawn me into their world. #netgalley #goodbybirdiegreenwing

Loved this book. It was initially a slow read for me, just a few pages per day because I lost my dad recently.

However the second half of the book was devoured in a couple of days. Loved the characters, the observations, the humour and the heartbreak.

Another excellent book - I loved Dog Days

A lovely, sad and moving story yet at the same time hugely uplifting.

The kindness and compassion of individuals and neighbours was inspiring. All from totally different lives with very different characters who naturally would not integrate but loneliness with all of them brought them together.

The three main characters have their own challenges to deal with. It was hard for all of them to trust and open up with hidden secrets.. It shows how important family and friendships can be.

Heart breaking but beautifully written.

What absolute gem of a book!
This book isn’t just about Birdie, nor even the other two main characters Jane and Ada. It’s about all the important women in their lives: mothers, sisters, daughters, friends. It’s about life and love in all their forms. It’s joyous and inspiring and uplifting even though there’s sadness. It’s one of those books that makes you reflect on life and makes you want to grasp it by its sides and live it to its fullest.
Beautifully written , you find yourself immersed in each of the stories of Birdie, Jane and Ada. I adored each and every one of the characters and the rich tapestry of life they reflected. Tears were shed but I finished this book with a great sense of peace and hope for the ladies of Shrubland Road.
Huge thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, Random House UK, Transworld for an arc in exchange for a review.

I had high hopes for this as I loved Dog Days…and Ericka didn’t disappoint at all. She’s becoming a go-to author for me and I hope she writes forever more about feisty, lovable characters and, of course, their dogs!

This book is about three women who have taken different paths and are at different stages in their lives, but they are thrown together - initially by proximity but then by humanity and strength and (sometimes begrudgingly) love.

I loved all the women but particularly Min. I often see Nan’s portrayed as lavender-smelling, cardigan-wearing, cuddly ladies with pockets full of Werthers. My Nan was not like that at all, she was the absolute patriarch of our family. Hard as nails and twice as spiky, with the biggest heart ever and Min reminded me of her so much. I am loving this representation of older women that I’m seeing in books - rebellious, strident, supportive, and not to be trifled with. From the acknowledgements, I can see that Ericka has the blood of these type of women running through her veins and so she writes them superbly.

I think Ericka is a real observer of people and relationships as she can convey how they work and the impacts they have so very well. That, coupled with her creation of imagery and environments puts you right there, you can see, feel and hear what the characters are experiencing.

There are laughs and tears within these pages, and they are bursting with what it means to be a purposeful part of the world.
4.5 stars.

Dog Days left me with a huge bookish hangover and I gave Birdie a hard time at the start doubting the author’s capacity to make me feel the same again, but the writing quickly had me under its spell…

Birdie is dying. She lives alone with her dog, Audrey. Although she will need help to live out her last months she repells all offers. Jane and her daugher, Frankie, are close neighbours. Jane is a nurse who has moved away from her Mother, Min. Whilst she needed the space, she is feeling guilty. Frankie wants to be a taxidermist, she says it how it is and is constantly in trouble at school. Ada is a Polish doctor - a doctor who treats cancer patients..As with Dog Days the author knits these lives together under Brighton skies and their connectedness becomes so much part of the story..

The different characters and personal storylines offer so many ways to be attached to this story. In the early chapters i was particularly drawn to the nurses. If you have spent any time in hospital you will have noticed nurses. At our most vulnerable, we are so reliant on these wonderful creatures for warmth, compassion, care and humanity. Their physical and personal attributes are amplified under our gaze…I thought the author captured this beautifully. The hospital scenes were so realistically done and on a personal level the book tapped into a seam of old feelings and memories …

Ericka writes relationships so well, intuiting the dialogues and rhythms in marriages, friendships, families..I don’t read romance, but I do when Ericka writes romance. I loved the beautiful warmth and affection between Jane and Helen and in particular a ‘will they won’t they relationship’ which had me postivitly tingling ..

This novel is full of humanity. Whilst in part this is about dying, it is so much about living. Although I shed tears, I laughed. a lot. A gorgeous book. Goodbye Birdie. I loved you xx

With many thanks to Netgalley and Doubleday for my digital copy.

I loved Dog Days, so was delighted to have the chance to read this lovely book, thanks to NetGalley.
Birdie Greenwing has led a sad, lonely life since her husband and sister died, except for the company of her little dog.. A diagnosis which will end her life starts the book. When nurse, Jane, and daughter Frankie move in to the same road as her, with their own secrets and challenges, Birdie’s life starts to change,and a little group of female friends starts to form and grow.
This is a really poignant read about female friendship, acceptance and love. I enjoyed the stories of all, the characters, irascible Min and kind Ada, who has fled her home in Poland and can’t or won’t go back are interwoven with the takes of Jane, Frankie and Birdie.
Glorious.

I love books with unique, real characters where life isn't run of the mill and faultless. This one of those books. We follow Birdie Greenwing as she lives her last part of her life. She's been in limbo since she lost her husband and sister in an accident. We also meet Jane, her neurodivergent daughter, Frankie and her mum, Min. In the same road lives Ada, Birdie's consultant who came to Brighton from rural Poland..
All quite lonely people, but their effect on each other, during Birdie's last year will change how they see life.

Goodbye Birdie Greenwing is the first book I’d read by Ericka Waller and proved to be a very enjoyable read. A great cast of characters and moving themes make this a book that is hard to put down once you start reading!

What a gorgeous novel. We know from the first few pages that Birdie Greenwing has very little time left. Lonely and miserable since her twin and husband died, she almost seems to welcome her cancer diagnosis. However, a chance accident brings her new neighbours into her orbit and all of their lives are about to change.
Jane and her daughter Frankie have moved away from the confines of her domineering mother but little seems to changed for the better. Ada, who by chance is Birdie’s oncologist, has chosen an isolated life, too fearful of letting anyone get close.
Once the cracks begin, not only do they each other into their lives but also others start to take an interest and slowly their lives become richer. But are they ready to face up to some long buried secrets and embrace the happiness that could be theirs?
I loved this book, it made my laugh and also brought tears to my eyes. It’s is so moving and yet so honest about death. The characters are brilliantly written, it’s hard to pick a favourite and the supporting cast are just as fabulous, particularly Connie and her little cafe. What a joy to read.

This was a beautifully written, and poignant book which I absolutely loved. The story is told from three perspectives; Birdie, Jane and Ada all of whom are facing challenges and harbour secrets yet feel unable to ask for help. A series of events take place which link the three and the author takes us on a journey as the story unfolds. All three characters were engaging, and well drawn ensuring I truly cared about the outcome. There was also a host of other characters who added to the warm Whilst the book was at times heartbreaking, the author also injected humour and ultimately the book was uplifting with positive messages of the power of family and friendships. This was a truly compelling and beautiful book and I am grateful to NetGalley and Random House for the opportunity to read this book.