Beth O'Leary

What a funny, quirky story with just enough serious content to prevent it from becoming too fluffy. It's not so much a flat share as a bed share - for two total strangers who keep it up for several months without meeting and communicating only by post-it notes. Leon, a night nurse, gets the right side of the bed during the day and Tiffy gets the left side at night. Sounds bizarre, but O'Leary pulls it off in this highly entertaining debut.

The Road Trip is Beth O’Leary’s third entertaining romcom novel, following her success with The Flatshare and The Switch.

Addie, her sister Deb and rideshare passenger, Rodney, have just begun the eight hour drive from Chichester to Scotland to attend a close friend’s wedding when they are rear ended by a Mercedes. The driver is Addie’s ex-boyfriend, Dylan, accompanied by his best friend, Marcus, heading to the same event. With the Mercedes out of action, Addie reluctantly offers the show more pair a ride in Deb’s Mini Cooper.

Unfolding from the alternating perspectives of Addie and Dylan in the ‘Now’ and the ‘Then’, the physically uncomfortable conditions created by five adults crammed into Deb’s car are almost secondary to the emotionally fraught atmosphere caused by the tumultuous history between Addie and Dylan in particular. I thought the narrative structure worked well to reveal to what happened between them in the past, and their current status with one another.

The road trip itself is beset by a chain of mishaps, from endless traffic (it’s a Bank Holiday weekend) to a breakdown, punctuated by Deb’s need to pump breastmilk, country music singalongs, and Marcus’s less obnoxious tantrums, providing plenty of humour. There’s always an edge of tension though as Addie and Dylan try to navigate their unexpected reunion, complicated by the presence of Marcus who played a significant role in their breakup.

O’Leary’s characters are interesting, all with their own lighthearted quirks, but many of them also struggle with serious issues such as clinical depression, alcoholism, addiction, sexual assault, and difficult family dynamics, making this story a little darker than her previous novels. And while there is a happy ever after for Addie and Dylan, as befitting the romance genre, it’s more mature than a fairytale ending.

Funny and engaging with a bit of edge, I enjoyed The Road Trip. show less

Wow. Another hit from O'Leary. I thought this was really good and I think did a great job of showing how grief affects people in different ways. You may initially not like the character of Leena for how she treats her mother, but I thought that the book did wonderfully of showing how a daughter is often the one that can hurt their mother their most, and even when they do so, still want their mother to fix it and make everything better. I loved the characters that we get to know when Leena show more switches with her grandmother and lives in Yorkshire.

"The Switch" follows 79 year old Eileen Cotton and her 20 something year old granddaughter Leena. Leena we find is not doing so well at her job at a PR company in London. Leena lost her younger sister almost a year ago and is now struggling to move on from the event. She's also angry at her mother for not doing more to prevent her sister's death. The two of them can barely speak without Leena being angry. Eileen is dealing with not only the lost of her granddaughter, but trying to keep her daughter from going under from all of her grief. Eileen's husband ran off with a dance instructor and now she's faced with also trying to date again. When Leena comes to visit, the two women realize that maybe the best thing for them would be to switch lives for about 2 months while Leena is on sabbatical. Leena can start repairing things with her mother, and fill in for her grandmother. And Eileen can go off and have an adventure in London.

Both of these women lives get shook up by the switch and it was fantastic. Eileen lives with Leena's roommates and even hangs out with her best friend at work. Eileen is a good meddler I found. Leena is a bit harder to take. She gets competitive with a local guy in the village and just generally acts like a know it all and doesn't really do much with her mother. At first. And then Leena gets her eyes opened and starts to realize that she's not the only one dealing with a lot of things unsaid.

I loved the other characters we get to know in this one. Bee, Fitz, and the Neighbourhood Watch Committee characters were great. I could have read about all of them all day.

The writing I thought was fantastic and the flow shifting between Leena and Eileen worked out very well.

The settings of a small village in Yorkshire and urban London came alive to me in this one. I loved both women's initial impressions of the places they "switched" to and how that came to change over time.

The ending I thought was pitch perfect. show less

I’ve read every Beth O’Leary novel and had very different reactions to all of them—I hated The Road Trip, loved The Flatshare, and The Switch was somewhere in between—as they are all radically different books with different interests. What I really love about O’Leary is her focus on writing what is been labeled as relationship fiction. Yes there is romance, but it also focuses on friendships and family and the emotional state of the characters. All of the characters come alive on show more the page and feel real. The No-Show has been my favorite since The Flatshare. I don’t often read contemporary fiction, yet O’Leary has pulled me in once again with this book.

I will admit that about half-way through the book I was impatiently waiting for something to finally happen. I came to the book with my own ideas of what the story would be, but she somehow managed to build a lot of suspense just within the everyday moments of these characters lives. The twists and turns and slow reveals were brilliant and I was really impressed with this novel. And at the end of it all were the fuzzy feelings that made me smile.

I’ve had some ups and downs with O’Leary’s books, but I’ve always said I would read everything she wrote and The No-Show is a reminder of why that is: complex characters, interesting relationships, a balance of serious issues and warmth, and an overall great reading experience. I can’t wait to see what O’Leary writes next. Based on her previous books I can only assume it is going to be entirely different from what’s she’s written before.

*Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. show less