Book Review :: The Road Trip by Beth O’Leary

The Road Trip by Beth O'Leary
ISBN: 1529409055
Published by Quercus
on 29 April 2021
Genres: Romance
Pages: 414
Goodreads

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?

Last updated on 13 February 2023

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What is The Road Trip by Beth O’Leary about?

The Road Trip by Beth O’Leary is the story of Addie and Dylan, who are unwantedly thrown back into each other’s paths after two years apart.

After their tragic breakup, Addie and Dylan haven’t seen each other since, but when their cars literally collide on their way to a wedding in Scotland, they suddenly have no choice but to all jump into one (very small) car.

“Love as a bargain. Like, giving up your heart is scary, but doable if the other person does it at the exact same moment, like two soldiers lowering their weapons.”

With Addie’s sister Debs, Dylan’s toxic friend Marcus, and random tag-along, Rodney, the not-so-motley crew make their way slowly up the country to try and get to the wedding of their mutual friend, Cherry. But it’s definitely not smooth sailing, especially when 5 of them are crammed into a mini.

Their pasts are brought up, there’s tension between nearly every pairing of people, and they’re not quite sure how Rodney is connected or how he knows the bride.

Will they make it to Scotland without killing each other? Or will the past eventually catch up to them and become too much to bear?

My thoughts on The Road Trip

After reading and loving The Flat Share, I had high hopes for The Road Trip. While I hadn’t read The Switch before I read this one, I have heard great things.

So what did I think of The Road Trip? Well I didn’t like it as much as The Flat Share, that’s for sure. In that book, I loved all of the characters, and I thought that story was brilliantly crafted, and beautifully told. I was hoping for similar things from The Road Trip but it did fall a little flat for me.

“But that’s the thing about almost: you can be ninety-nine per cent there, you can be an inch away from doing it, but if you stop yourself from stepping over that line, nobody will ever know how close you were.”

This book actually took me over a month to read, and that’s very unlike me. But while I did enjoy it on the whole, and I’ve given it 3.5 stars, it just didn’t grab me as much as I thought it would.

Addie and Dylan are … annoying? The book is told in a dual timeline, and we’re given whole sections of Addie and Dylan’s life when they first meet, how they fall in love, what their friendship was like and how the other characters in the story fall into place. We meet Cherry and some of the other people who are in their lives in those earlier days. It’s all a bit chaotic. Dylan then heads off on this long holiday/gap year with Marcus and leaves Addie wondering if he’ll ever come back and if they’re actually still together.

When they eventually do come together again, it doesn’t end well … and we fast forward back to the present, where they’re stuck in a mini together, travelling miles and miles on the motorways to get to Scotland.

While I did enjoy this 3rd book by Beth O’Leary, I think I was comparing it too much to The Flat Share, something you shouldn’t do when you’re reading books by the same author but you can’t help but do it, I think.

Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if I had read it in a more succinct time frame, and I hadn’t (albeit accidentally) drawn it out over a month or so.

Am I glad I read it? Yeah, absolutely. It was a fun read. Would I read it again? Probably not.

But what about you!?

Have you read The Road Trip by Beth O’Leary? What did you think?