Plot:

Addie and her sister are about to embark on an epic road trip to a friend’s wedding in the north of 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 three 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?

Review:

The title had me.
I loved both The Flatshare and The Switch, but this one disappointingly fell a bit short for me. It lacked the light-hearted humour of those first two for the most part. Towards the end, there were some humorous moments, but it wasn’t enough to make up for the journey to get there.

The Road Trip is, at its core, the story of Addie and Dylan’s relationship. Told from the present-day when they are unexpectedly crammed in a car together with three other people on their way to a mutual friend’s wedding and from the past with the origins of their relationship and its ultimate demise.

I’m not a fan of stories where pretty much all of the characters know something that the reader doesn’t, and those hidden things aren’t revealed until very late in the book, yet all throughout people keep hinting about them and alluding to them but not coming right out and saying what happened. There are ways of doing it but this one dangled it in-front of the reader and I didn’t like how this one was done.

I kept wanting to skip ahead and see what the big issue was that caused such a problem and why the dynamics of all of the friendships and other relationships were so strained and strange. Honestly, I didn’t care for Dylan at all until nearly the end which only changed slightly.

I got pretty angry about his treatment of Addie throughout the book and the constant acting like everything wrong was her fault. There were just many depressing elements of this novel which, in a way, created some depth, but also just gave me a dejected feeling because I saw how hard Addie was trying to make things work and how she was basically thwarted at every turn.

I just needed a LOT more humour and light hearted moments. I will definitely keep reading books by this author, but I need more fun and less depression.

2/5 Stars