Title: The Road Trip
Author: Beth O’Leary
Published: April 29, 2021
Publisher: Quercus Books
Readership: Adult
Genre: Romance
Rating: ★★★.5
Content warnings: toxic friendships, toxic masculinity, homophobic parents, attempted rape
I received a copy of The Road Trip from Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Addie and her sister are about to embark on an epic road trip to a friend’s wedding in rural Scotland. The playlist is all planned and the snacks are packed.
But, not long after setting off, a car slams into the back of theirs. The driver is none other than Addie’s ex, Dylan, who she’s avoided since their traumatic break-up two years earlier.
Dylan and his best mate are heading to the wedding too, and they’ve totalled their car, so Addie has no choice but to offer them a ride. The car is soon jam-packed full of luggage and secrets, and with four-hundred miles ahead of them, Dylan and Addie can’t avoid confronting the very messy history of their relationship…
Will they make it to the wedding on time? And, more importantly, is this really the end of the road for Addie and Dylan?
I have to say, I’m a bit of fan of Beth O’Leary’s. She has a very easy-to-read writing style and stories and characters that are compelling.
The Road Trip is about a road trip to a wedding that takes a steep turn when Addie and her sister are forced to share their care with Addie’s ex, Dylan, and his best friend, along with a stranger heading to the same wedding. After a car accident and a series of other unfortunate events, Addie and Dylan need to hash out their feelings from the past and the present, while everyone else gets in the way.
Of the three Beth O’Leary books I’ve read, this one was probably not my favourite, but it was still an enjoyable read. I liked the way that O’Leary used a split-timeline to tell the stories from past and present. She wove them together brilliantly and made it compelling to find out exactly what happened between Addie and Dylan and to set it up so we want them to have their second chance at love.
I also really liked Addie’s sister, and some of the additional characters we meet along the way. I was less of a fan of Dylan’s best friend, who’s toxic relationship with Dylan is not only a source of tension for the couple but also quite jarring to read. Which may have been intentional, but it did occasionally pull me out of the story.
Overall, though, I loved this road trip, second-chance romance that had a lot of heart, tackled some tough topics and still managed to wrangle all the emotions out of me while reading.
Noveltea Corner 