PAGES: 352
PUBLISHER: Simon and Schuster
FORMAT: Paperback
BUY IT: Waterstones
RATING: 3.5 Stars
SUMMARY
Amy Curry is having a terrible year. Her mother has decided to move all the way across the country and needs Amy to drive their car from California to the East Coast. There's just one problem: since the death of her father, Amy hasn't been able to get behind the wheel of a car. Enter Roger, the 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 part of Amy's plans for the road trip. But then neither was driving on the Loneliest Road in America, seeing the Colorado Mountains, visiting diners, dingy motels and Graceland. But as they drive, and she grows closer to Roger, Amy finds that the people you least expected are the ones you need the most - - and that sometimes you have to get lost in order to find your way home.
REVIEW
When I went to buy Isla, I saw that it was one buy one get one half price and I just couldn’t pass that up so I decided to finally purchase Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour since everyone raves about it. The original UK cover was just horrendous but they recently re-released the book with the US cover so I finally bought it. So after finishing Isla, I started reading Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour and I really enjoyed it. I finished it yesterday when I just spent the majority of the day sitting in bed reading it.So here I am, attempting to write a review of it. I always find it hard to write reviews of contemporaries, especially romances. So this review will probably be a bit all over the place and will definitely not be my best review but let’s go anyway.
Let me just start by clarifiying something; this is most definitely not a lighthearted contemporary romance. I went into this book thinking that it would be for some reason but it wasn’t. Even though the synopsis suggests a cute romance story, it really isn’t that and I was disappointed because of that. This book mainly focuses on Amy as she starts learning to live her life again, after her father’s death. And while I found it incredibly interesting and moving, this wasn’t what I was expecting it to be like which contributed to my slight disasppoint in the book.
Amy was quite annoying at that start. I guess I can’t really judge how she acts because I’ve never been through the death of a close family member but I thought that she had been a bit too down in the dumps at the start. It makes sense since she felt like she was to blame but it didn’t make for a good protagonist. However as the book went along and she learned that she needs to start opening herself up and stop kicking herself for something that happened in the past, I really enjoyed her as a character.
Roger himself wasn’t that fabulous. He spent 95% of the book obsessing over an ex girlfriend and I just grew to be sick and tired of him. He also wasn’t impulsive or amazing as the synopsis suggested. I honestly expected someone completely arrogant yet lovable and he wasn’t anything like that. I was slightly disappointed with Roger.
The romance itself wasn’t all that great. There was no suggestion that Roger had any feelings for Amy at all throughout the book but suddenly they were just together. There was no progression to falling in love and recognizing that they like each other. It wasn’t a swoon worthy relationship and it didn’t make me feel any feelings. The book also ended somewhat openly and that irritated me. I’m fine with open endings but not this sort of open ending. How do they figure it all out? It doesn’t always just work out perfectly.
I understand that if you’ve read this whole review, you probably think I hated this book. I didn’t. I enjoyed it. It just wasn’t what I thought it would be and it didn’t make me feel anything. It was a good book to read in between other books but it really didn’t live up to it’s hype. I gave this book 3 stars on goodreads but it is closer to 3.5. I did quite enjoy it and if you go into this book expecting it to be more of a coming of age story, you will like it a lot more.
- Sofia.
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