Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, Kobo, Scribd, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Indigo (Chapters)
On the Road to Love*
Coming Home to Friendship and Love
As the book opens, Stacy is given divorce papers by her husband out of the blue. She retreats within herself for a while, and even some friends whom she thought were close fall way. Feeling a bit rejected, she decides to go home to Florida and reconnect with her parents and old friends.
What will it be like for Stacy to go home again? What will her relationship with her parents be like? Will she still feel close to her old girlfriends? How about the boy next door she used to find so annoying?
While I thought the scenes between Stacy and her girlfriends were good as well as the ones with Gavin (the boy next door), much of the book rings emotionally false to me regarding the divorce. Stacy is giving the divorce papers at the outset of the book, and we see her friend’s poor reaction to it and her, but the concept of the divorce didn’t really seem to be fully integrated into the rest of the book. Yes, it’s mentioned here or there, but not with any emotional depth. It almost feels like it is a plot device to get her to go to Florida and reconnect with her girlfriends and place her with Gavin. If it had been integrated more, it could have been a good backdrop and impetus for growth and change. But when it feels like it’s just tacked on at the beginning, it feels irrelevant to the greater story. I think this book would have been better if the author had skipped the divorce part if she wasn’t planning to fully integrate it in a way that was emotionally honest. I’ve been divorced, so I can appreciate that a woman’s true reaction to this pivotal event in her life has echoes that ripple in her life for a very long time.
That said, I did enjoy the girlfriends-get-back-together and the second chance with the boy next door aspects.
