Grief and the search for truth are the themes covered by my next two reviews.
Amy and Roger’s story is thrashed out whilst on a road trip together.
I love a good road trip story (think John Green’s Paper Towns for starters). It’s a great device for moving a story along with the obvious parallel between the internal journey and the physical trip.
Amy and Roger both have problems that they are running away from. Amy and her father were in a car accident together 3 months earlier. She survived – he didn’t. Her brother has been put in rehab and her mother has moved to the other side of the country. Amy hasn’t driven since the accident, so her mother arranges for a family friend to drive her over when school finishes.
Enter Roger – handsome and all grown up since Amy last met him. And still hung-up on his ex-girlfriend who has just dumped him in a vague, unresolved way.
The road trip helps both Amy & Roger find the truth, deal with their grief and move on… in exactly the way you would expect. Which doesnt mean that I didn’t enjoy this story. I did – thoroughly.
Amy & Roger are both likeable characters, their journey is believeable, the book is scattered with photos taken en route, etchings, copies of receipts and song play lists. It’s fun, light-hearted and un-put-downable.
There are a couple of sex scenes, but they are discretely dealt with (no details!) and are appropriately in context.
Amy Curry is having a terrible year. Her mother has decided to move across the country and needs Amy to get their car from California to Connecticut. There’s just one small problem: Since her father died this past spring, Amy hasn’t been able to get behind the wheel. Enter Roger, the nineteen-year-old son of an old family friend, who turns out to be unexpectedly cute … and dealing with some baggage of his own.
Meeting new people and coming to terms with her father’s death were not what Amy had planned on this trip. And traveling the Loneliest Road in America, seeing the Colorado mountains, crossing the Kansas plains, and visiting diners, dingy motels, and Graceland were definitely not on the itinerary. But as they drive, Amy finds that the people you least expected are the ones you may need the most—and that sometimes you have to get lost in order to find your way home.
bronasbooks.com 