Title: The Road Trip
Author: Beth O’Leary
Genre: Romance/Contemporary
Source: Library
Trigger Warnings: Alcoholism and drug use, untreated mental illness, homophobic parents, sexual assault.
Summary: What if the end of the road is just the beginning?

Four years ago, Dylan and Addie fell in love under the Provence sun. Wealthy Oxford student Dylan was staying at his friend Cherry’s enormous French villa; wild child Addie was spending her summer as the on-site caretaker. Two years ago, their relationship officially ended. They haven’t spoken since.

Today, Dylan’s and Addie’s lives collide again. It’s the day before Cherry’s wedding, and Addie and Dylan crash cars at the start of the journey there. The car Dylan was driving is wrecked, and the wedding is in rural Scotland–he’ll never get there on time by public transport.

So, along with Dylan’s best friend, Addie’s sister, and a random guy on Facebook who needed a ride, they squeeze into a space-challenged Mini and set off across Britain. Cramped into the same space, Dylan and Addie are forced to confront the choices they made that tore them apart–and ask themselves whether that final decision was the right one after all. 

What just happened?

I don’t know what just happened?

This book was…

A drive.

A wild adventure.

One to make me laugh and cry and cover my mouth in horror. This was super good but man was it intense. So intense that I’m still reeling having finished it a few hours ago.

Jumping in.

I love and loathe several characters in this book in equal measure and there’s something about it that is so delicious. They are horrifically flawed, with secrets and issues and I’m so glad some of them are in therapy but possibly all of them need to be in therapy. Perhaps even group therapy, completely outside of a moving vehicle.

This book starts with a summer romance…sort of…I guess you could say that Addie and Dylan’s story starts with a summer romance, in a French villa no less, a seductive location in its own right. But summer’s end and the change in settings definitely represent a change in their relationship which is well written and definitely makes it hard to put down the book as they navigate those changes.

It’s quite the adventure, flipping back in between then and now, learning what had happened between the characters two years prior to the beginning of the novel and then trying to figure out why and how they ended up where they are now. It’s a mystery, wrapped in a well-written storyline.

There were moments when I wished I could just have the answers I wanted and know what would happen in the end but that was what had me continuously flipping the pages.

I will be sticking with Beth O’Leary for quite some time I think and if you enjoyed this you should definitely check out The Flat Share. Me? I’ll be grabbing The No-Show any day now.