My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Title: Goodbye and Everything After

Spice Rating:

Author: Mae Coyiuto

Format: eBook (NetGalley)

Pages: 320

Publication Date: 2/17/26

Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

Categories: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Magical Realism, Filipino Representation

Disclaimer: **I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  All thoughts and opinions are my own.**

Thank you to Feiwel & Friends for giving me a chance to read this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

A teen girl comes face to face with her dad’s spirit when she ignores a strict Filipino superstition in this contemporary young adult novel that tackles grief, family tension, and first love.

It’s been five years since Nika’s beloved father passed away, but her family has never fully grieved. They don’t speak of him much at all, except on the anniversary of his death.

Whenever they visit her father’s grave, Nika’s superstitious mother still insists on practicing pagpag, a Filipino belief that you can never go directly home after attending a funeral—or risk the spirit of the departed following you back home.

But when her mom’s new fiancé suddenly shows up at the cemetery for this year’s memorial for her dad, she furiously walks out, breaking the pagpag superstition. The next day, she finds herself face-to-face with the ghost of her dead father. . . and Nika’s the only one who can see him.

As she spends time reconnecting with her dad’s ghost, Nika learns about her parents’ past and how they started dating back in high school. And when she starts to fall for her neighbor Seph and accidentally re-creates memories of her parents’ love story with him, her dad’s spirit slowly becomes more solid and alive. Fearing that she’ll lose her dad again, Nika makes it her mission to find a way to make her dad stay permanently, no matter what the cost.

With a perfect blend of humor and heart, Mae Coyiuto artfully brings past to present in a way that explores grief head-on.

Content Warning: grief, cursing

Nika is a teenager and dealing with a lot of emotions. Her mom is engaged to be married to their dentist, and Nika feels like she is the only one grieving her dad’s death. She is a teenager, so she has some very strong feelings and thoughts about everything, and she curses.

What drew me to this story was the Filipino representation, more interestingly the Chinese-Filipino representation that I’m not to familiar with. I love seeing my people represented in books, so this was a great way for me to learn more about one of the many different cultures that thrive in the Philippines. Even though I’m not Chinese-Filipino I still recognized some of the foods they talked about, which I love. I related to the family expectations Nika is dealing with and family drama.

When her dad appears to her, I thought it was fitting, because it gave her a sense of closure at the end and helped the family come together to not only honor his memory, but deal with the grief each of them have been handling, almost alone, but not really alone.

There is even a little teenage romance, which I thought was cute.

Final Thoughts:

I loved the Filipino representation in this book with the cultural practices, the food, and the family dynamics. I thought this was a heart felt story that dealt with grief and moving on, which can be really strong feeling to manage when you are a teenager. But I thought this story did a great job of showing how closure, forgiveness, and moving on can be healing for everyone.

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