Title: The Road Trip

Author: Beth O’Leary

Publisher: Berkley 2021

Genre: Romance

Pages: 398

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges:

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.

I just read The Flatshare for book club and was expecting more of the same. This book is less fun and light romance and more serious relationship drama. But I found that I really did like it. We get a great forced proximity trope to explore the past and potential future relationship between Addie and Dylan. We get a much more nuanced look at romantic relationships. I can definitely see how O’Leary has grown as a writer since The Flatshare. Addie and Dylan are much more realistic characters. Tiffy and Leon were a bit 2-dimensional. This book was much more relatable. While I really enjoyed the story between Addie and Dylan, I loved seeing the other relationships in the book even more. Addie and Deb have an amazing sister bond and I loved seeing them support each other unconditionally. And I loved seeing how Marcus changed and grew throughout the timeline. This book isn’t going to be on my Top 10 list probably, but I really did enjoy this one.

Next up on the TBR pile: