Author: Adi Alsaid
Published: July 29th, 2014
Hardcover, 352 pages
5 Gold Stars
(summary from Goodreads)
Five strangers. Countless adventures. One epic way to get lost.
Four teens across the country have only one thing in common: a girl named LEILA. She crashes into their lives in her absurdly red car at the moment they need someone the most.
There's HUDSON, a small-town mechanic who is willing to throw away his dreams for true love. And BREE, a runaway who seizes every Tuesday - and a few stolen goods along the way. ELLIOT believes in happy endings... until his own life goes off-script. And SONIA worries that when she lost her boyfriend, she also lost the ability to love.
Hudson, Bree, Elliot and Sonia find a friend in Leila. and when Leila leaves them, their lives are forever changed. But it is during Leila's own 4,268-mile journey that she discovers the most important truth - sometimes, when you need most is right where you started. And maybe the only way to find what you're looking for is to get lost along the way.
Road trip stories always get me. I love the moments between cities, the driving down empty roads where all the characters do is talk to each other and become better friends. Usually they involve a couple people, maybe more, that are together the whole way through. They are not usually just one girl travelling up to Alaska alone, influencing many people along the way. Leila is a lost girl and through her travels, she meets many different people and ends up helping them as much as they are helping her. Told in a series of five short sections, each with a different character's story, we see how Leila jumps into these people's lives and stays there long after she's gone.
This book starts off with a bang. Leila arrives at Hudson's car garage, ready to start her trip, and quickly becomes a part of his life that he wasn't expecting to have. This part made me smile but also broke my heart, the quick love that Hudson and Leila share is over before it began and Leila continues on her journey, though Hudson is never far from her mind. Hudson is a sweet character, very homebound and ambitious. Though he doesn't want to stray far from home and his dad, and Leila gives him the best reason not to. Bree is misunderstood. After her parent's death, she couldn't handle having her older sister as her guardian so she ran away. She's been on the road for a while when Leila picks her up hitchhiking. They become fast friends and get into a lot of trouble. They have a great, short adventure full of laughs, tears, and some jail time and Leila is there to help Bree reunite with her sister. Elliot's story starts off just as badly as the others. He has just old his best friend that he loves her but she did not feel the same way. Oh and it's prom. Leila finds him on the road in his tux, hoping to end it all. He lives for movies and compares his life to those he's seen on the silver screen constantly. Leila tells him to go win her, like they would in a movie, and so they set off to tell Maribel again how much Elliot loves her. Not an easy feat and not anything like how Elliot expects it to work out, but life isn't the movies and things don't always work out. Lastly, there's Sonia, on the eve of her late boyfriend's sister's wedding, where she is falling for someone else in a way that she knows she's not ready for. After an argument with Jeremiah, Sonia ditches the wedding and finds Leila, a girl who's willing to take her back home to the States. But when Jeremiah calls saying Sonia has the rings in the pocket of his jacket that she's still wearing, Sonia must find a way back to the wedding, only her passport's been stolen. Trying to smuggle themselves across the border to Canada isn't easy and they get into their own far amount of trouble along the way. In the time it takes them to get back to the wedding, Sonia realizes that everything she needs was in that hotel and that it's time to move on with her life.
Finally, the last section of the book is all about Leila. She makes it to her destination to see the Northern Lights, but after everything that's happened. it's not what she needs. We find out why she's been running, why she on this random journey to Alaska, and what she was really looking for by being there. Through these people she's met along the way, Leila has discovered what's really important and who she really needs in her life. It's a heart-warming tale of those who are lost and how they get found. The writing is beautifully crafted and Alsaid weaves a story through all these different characters that somehow makes so much sense at the end. We meet people in life that we know we'll never see again but that doesn't make them any less important to us. The people Leila meets shape her in a way she'd never expect and through their actions, she realizes what hers should be. A great story about love, loss, and the importance of moving on with life. This book certainly made me want to go on a road trip, simply to meet new people and have amazing adventures. A perfect summer read for anyone looking for a book with heart, friendship and some sweet romance.
No comments:
Post a Comment