The Road Trip by Beth O'Leary

Amy   
Lynnie

contemporary fiction

Addie and Dylan broke up a couple years ago but are both on their way to a mutual friend’s wedding when Dylan’s car crashes into Addie’s. The five people who had been riding in the two cars must now squeeze into an Austin Mini for The Road Trip to the wedding.

Amy's Review

The novel switches between scenes from “Then” (when Addie and Dylan met and dated) to “Now” (while on the road trip).  From the Then sections, we learn about their relationship and their past. From the Now sections we see that both of them seem to have unresolved feelings toward each other and some obvious mutual physical attraction. The point of the story is to find out what eventually happened to break them up and how they will find their way back to each other.

It was a cute story but I found myself lacking desire to return to reading it. It isn’t the kind of tale that grabs you. Rather, the reader can see how this one will end up and I think the journey (both literal and figurative) to get there feels like it takes longer than it should. I kept looking to see how much was left of the novel. The toxic relationships were a bit excruciating. But I did like the quirky characters and the bizarre situations in which they found themselves on many occasions. Sadly, I did not enjoy it as much as Beth O'Leary's other novels. But her trademark humor was evident.

Lynnie's Review

Having read, and loved, a few other books by Beth O'Leary (The Flatshare and The Switch), I was eager to give The Road Trip a try.

As always, O'Leary has written wonderful characters that it's easy to grow fond of and cheer for. However, this book is my least favorite of the three books by her that I've read- mostly because it was SO predictable, and kind of dragged on sometimes. The chapters alternated between "now" and "then" or as I began to think of them as "I hate you" & "I'm obsessed with you"- at some point all the back & forth felt really ridiculous.

So, I'd put this firmly in the beach read pile- uncomplicated, occasionally sexy, with fun characters (even the villains are lovely, which is actually sort of disturbing now that I think about it) and an easy story to follow.