Hello Goodbye

About the Hello Goodbye series

Hello Goodbye is a pair of standalone M/M romances Sarina Bowen published in 2017, each built around a young man who has to choose between the people who raised him and the man he loves. Goodbye Paradise follows Josh and Caleb, best friends since childhood on an isolated Wyoming ranch commune where outsiders call it a cult and the two boys have spent years hiding what they feel for each other; when Caleb's plan to get them both out backfires, Josh is left homeless in a world he was never prepared for, and it falls to Caleb to find him. Hello Forever turns to Axel and Caxton, whose teenage relationship ended abruptly after they were caught together at church camp; six years later Axel spots Cax's face on television during a college basketball game -- at the very school that has just offered Axel a coaching job -- and the two are thrown back into each other's orbit in the same small Massachusetts town, with Cax still closeted to protect the younger brothers who depend on him.

The two books share no characters, but both pair an openly gay love interest with a partner still constrained by a closed, controlling community -- a farm compound in one book, a conservative small town in the other -- and both promise no cliffhangers. Readers who want Bowen's M/M work, or emotionally heavy small-town and found-family romance in the vein of True North, should start here.

How to read this series

Publication order: Goodbye Paradise (2017), then Hello Forever (2017). The two books are fully standalone -- different couples, different settings, no shared cast -- so nothing is lost by reading them in either order. Publication order is still the simplest path since it's how Bowen released and packaged them as a pair, and the two work well as a matched set even without a shared plot: both are M/M romances about a closeted or once-closeted partner weighing a controlling community against a love he can't let go of. Readers who want the heavier, farm-commune setting should start with Goodbye Paradise; readers who prefer a campus-and-sports backdrop with an openly gay lead from the start should begin with Hello Forever instead.