Goodbye days a novel

I was hype to read this because I loved Zentner's first book, [b:The Serpent King 22752127 The Serpent King Jeff Zentner https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1435673762s/22752127.jpg 42298618], so much, but I have to say I really struggled with the central premise of this? Well, not the whole premise–see, Carver has a crew of 3 best friends, and one day when he has to work and he knows his friends are out having fun without him, he texts one of the friends and asks where they are and says “Text me back.” The driving friend texts him back–and rear ends a semi truck and all 3 friends die. That, I think, is a really solid and plausible tragedy to center your tearjerker YA novel about. BUT then the friend's dad wants to press charges against Carver for sending the text?? And that's what lost me bc I was like “REALLY???” I even googled it and it turns out there has been one case of a lawsuit like that but it just seemed like...c'mon really, you're gonna sue this sad teen boy who already blames himself??? I think it would have been more interesting if it were just about his own self-blame, or even like, feeling judgment/disapproval without this actual legal threat??? I did like the characters, and I like a good teen angst book, and I liked that therapy and meds were shown as helpful, useful tools rather than like “something that steals your personality away”, and I liked that Carver got called on some other shit (not related to texting)....but the whole legal investigation just felt like Too Much and it bugged me the whole time (even with the justification that the dead friend's dad is a judge...IDK IDK).

RTC