“Irrepressible dreamer Chloe Vance needs to tell her pragmatic mom, Edie, that she has accepted a low-paying, two-year art instructor role at a Christian international school in Prague. And her older sister, Lauren--the "responsible one"--is doing all she can to keep the family from finding out she has been fired for a stupid mistake, plus figure out her next career move. Meanwhile, Edie, estranged from her own sister following their mother's recent death, is frankly in no mood for anything else to change.
The one thing they can all agree on? Life in books sure is easier to figure out than life in the real world. As the three women embark on a nine-day road trip to visit significant literary sites throughout America's heartland, they hope to find inspiration through the works and lives of literary greats. And as they experience firsthand the adventure and wonder of the classics, they'll have to come to terms with their own needs and desires, as well as those of the most important women in their lives--each other.”
Series: As of now, no. A stand-alone novel.
Spiritual Content- Scriptures are mentioned, remembered, read, & thought over; Prayers; Going to a chapel; Talks about God; ’H’s are not capital when referring to God or Jesus; Chloe reads a Bible study devotional with commentary on the book of John (on-page); Chloe listens to the podcast of a sermon (on-page); Lauren reads Philippians 4:12-13 and then swats the Bible closed because no one has told her about the secret it mentions; Edie thinks that pastors are “downright unhelpful sometimes” when one makes a comment she doesn’t like (not faith-based, but because of an incident); Edie thinks about the question “What would Jesus do?”, but adds the second part of it for her would be “and would [her mother] agree” with it; Edie wonders if her mother can see her now “through the veil between eternity and present”; Mentions of God & Jesus; Mentions of prayers & praying; Mentions of Bibles, Bible reading, & those and events in the Bible; Mentions of missionaries; Mentions of churches, church going, church events, pastors, a sermon, & youth group; Mentions of crosses at churches; Mentions of praise music, hymns, Christian songs, & Christian artists (such as TobyMac & MercyMe); A few mentions of faiths; A few mentions of cross necklaces; A few mentions of blessings & being blessed; A few mentions of a Christian school; A mention of thanking God; A mention of “not even God [H]imself” would have been able to convince Edie to wear a certain outfit; A mention of morning meditations with God; A mention of sins; A mention of nuns; A mention of something being true being called “gospel solid”; A mention of the praying hands emoji; A mention of someone knowing that nature wasn’t “the god” and that nature was the testimony of the Creator;
*Note: Edie & Chloe both use the phrase “God bless” when needing help or in relief thrice; The phrase “TGIF” is said once in text; Edie calls pre-dawn an “ungodly hour” and a place as “hot as the devil”; An animal is called a “devil”; A couple mentions of luck; A mention of a place having a domed roof that looks like a demigod; A mention of someone being “lucky enough” to not have an older sibling beneath down his neck.
Negative Content- Minor cussing including: a ‘blasted’, a ‘heck’, a ‘stupid’, and a ‘sucker’; A mention of a curse (said by Lauren while in pain and not written out); Some eye rolling; Pain & Injuries (border-line barely-above-not-detailed // semi-detailed); Because of Edie’s father abandoning her family when she was young, she worries about others in her life not coming back for her (such as her husband who often reminded her that he would always be back for her); Lauren feels very uncomfortable with a man at a bus station staring at her; Mentions of orphan trains, families being split-up, & mothers choosing to keep some of their children over others (this visibly effects Edie to learn about in a museum); Mentions of pain & injuries; Mentions of beer, drinking, & drunk men; A few mentions of Edie thinking of the worst case scenarios (such as being in car wreck, trapped in a fire, & never seeing her husband again); A few mentions of the mafia & gangs; A few mentions of criminals & thieves; A few mentions of a fictional fire & gunshot (from a book/movie); A couple mentions of wars (the Civil War and World War I); A couple mentions of Edie’s father abandoning their family; A couple mentions of car accident/wrecks; A mention of a possible murder; A mention of war stories; A mention of the Great Depression; A mention of lies; A mention of cigarettes & smoking; A mention of bodily fluids; A mention of an injured duck from a beaver trap;
*Note: Edie had a strained relationship with her mother & has strained relationships with her daughters; Lauren and Chloe have a strained relationship with each other & their mother; Due to this, there are hurtful and snarky comments made towards each other at times throughout the book & all three trying to meet the other’s approval/expectations (such as Lauren thinking that Chloe is too naive and protected by others, Chloe thinking about her mother’s comments of expectations for her because of her age, Lauren trying to keep a secret from her mother so she doesn’t think that her daughter is foolish and thus earn her disapproval, Lauren thinking that Chloe never loses their mother’s support while she works hard to keep her parents from rebuffing her or needing to “find extra grace” for her, & Lauren wondering if other women have endured the “wake of their mother’s derision” (like she does)); All three of them recall comments and (negative) phrases from Edie’s mother (also Edie’s sister who has taken a long time to “unravel” from the experience of her mother’s reign); Edie resents her sister for leaving her to take care of their mother and her estate sale; *Spoilers* At the very end, Edie realizes that she’s let too much time pass to tell her daughters how they amaze her, that she thought that she had to validate the space she took up by doing things others deemed worthwhile, & how her sister drew a different boundary line with their mother; Edie starts to reconnect with her sister as well; Edie wants to take her rough beginning with her family and craft a better ending *End of Spoilers*; Edie was the caregiver for her mother with Alzheimer’s (this includes a few flashbacks of that difficult time and her thinking about the pain of being unable to reach her mother prior to having Alzheimer’s); When Chloe comments on a town having a “thrum of creativity”, Edie comments that it’s the “thrum of liberal policies” she feels (which makes Chloe comment that they agreed no politics on this trip); Edie makes a comment that a place has too many “American flag tank tops” for a place to be considered civilized; Lauren thinks a fictional character is the kind of women every girl should aspire to be “powerful, a leader, [and] immune to others’ opinions of her”; All about & many mentions of books (and the movie versions), poems, authors, & fictional characters and events (‘The Grapes of Wrath’, ‘O Pioneers’, ‘Catch-22’, ‘Invisible Man’, ‘The Lord of the Rings’, ‘The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes’, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, ‘Charlotte’s Web’, ‘The Outsiders’, ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’, ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’, ‘A Christmas Carol’, ‘My Ántonia’, ‘One of Ours’, ‘The Bridges of Madison Country’, ’Shoeless Joe’, ‘The Imperfect Life of T. S. Eliot’ by Lyndall Gordon, ’The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, ‘The Glass Menagerie’, ‘Little House on the Prairie’, Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Willa Cather, Mark Twain, Francis Ford Coppola, Joel C. Rosenberg, Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, L. Frank Baum, Joan Lowery Nixon, The Brontë sisters, Robert James Waller, W. P. Kinsella, John Irving, Flannery O’Connor, Eugene Field, Maya Angelou, Kate Chopin, T. S. Eliot, William S. Burroughs, Tennessee Williams, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, Ayn Rand, Sinclair Lewis, Harold Bell Wright, & John Steinbeck); Many mentions of actors/actresses, singers, & other celebrities/well-known figures (Judy Garland, John Wayne, Meryl Streep, Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner, John Cena, Taylor Swift and her songs/album, Bruce Springsteen, Hank Williams, Warren Buffett, Jimmy Carter, Oprah, Stan Musial, & George Brett); Mentions of movies & TV shows (The Sound of Music, Field of Dreams, Doogie Howser M.D., & Law & Order); Mentions of brand names & items (Pitt pen, Waterford vase, Dawn soap, Garmin watch, Jenga, Advil, Tylenol PM, Carter’s ink, Tums, & Amtrak); Mentions of social media sites & websites (Instagram, Google Maps, the Scout app, & Etsy); Mentions of car brands; Mentions of sports teams; A few mentions of stores and restaurants (Macy’s & General Tso’s); A few mentions of Willa Cather swearing to be “nothing like what she was expected to be” and showed that by cutting her hair to be like a boy’s, vowing to be a surgeon, and dressing like a boy while calling herself William Cather Jr. (because of her accomplishments, Lauren thinks that Cather is the kind of woman every girl should aspire to be); A couple mentions of Halloween; A mention of anime.
Sexual Content- A border-line barely-above-not-detailed // semi-detailed kiss; Some staring, attraction, electricity, & touches/dancing; Seeing a couple dance, embrace, & kiss (barely-above-not-detailed); A married couple share a few kisses & embraces (barely-above-not-detailed); Lauren meets a guy she is attracted to on the road trip and keeps him and meeting him a secret from her mother and sister (later Edie thinks about how dangerous it was of Lauren to do this and sneak out to meet him); Lauren thinks about the old her would have been willing to “pour herself into any shape” for a guy’s attention; Edie comments on Lauren and Chloe’s lack of hurry about dating and getting married; A comment about a movie featuring a young woman chafing under her mom’s scrutiny about her prospects and that being “a tale that would endure for as long as mothers had daughters”; Mentions of dating, dates, cute/handsome guys, & boyfriends; Mentions of flirting & winks; A few mentions of kisses (between a couple who just met/started dating); A mention of a young woman running away to be with a man;
*Note: Lauren thinks about her weight & doesn’t eat well throughout the book (this includes Lauren checks her calorie levels after exercising and later not adding dressing to her salad because it adds too many calories, noticing the “pudge” of her lower abdomen starting to go down (but not enough for her liking), Chloe noticing Lauren’s ribs when hugging her and Lauren checking that they aren’t “that pronounced” (and planning to avoid her sister’s touch during the trip so she doesn’t catch on), exercising often while on the road trip, trying to mask the pain of her empty stomach with ab exercises); *Spoiler* In the epilogue, Lauren is noted to be eating fuller meals *End of Spoiler*; Edie is going through menopause & there’s a handful of mentions of it and side effects like sweating terribly at night; Edie rubs in lotion every night while “willing it to ward off the crepe and sag most women her age suffered”; Edie notices the “pudge” poking out of her blouse and thinks “Not too bad. Better than most women her age, anyway.”; Edie tells Chloe that she doesn’t wear shorts and that “no one needs to see the state” of her thighs; Edie thinks about her mother saying that men “detested” a woman’s hair above her ears & her be seething at her granddaughter’s current hairstyle.
-Edie Vance
-Lauren Vance, age 32
-Chloe Vance, age 26
P.O.V. switches between them
352 pages
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Pre Teens-
New Teens-
Early High School Teens-
Older High School Teens-
My personal Rating-
I figured that this book would be a bit of a wild card for me for a few different reasons, but mainly because I’m not super familiar with a lot of classic books. That definitely proved to be true as I read this book and recognize very little of the literary references. I think those that know the areas these characters go to or love classics like the ones mentioned would probably enjoy this book much more than me.
As far as the characters: I felt bad for Edie because you could completely see how the lack of her mother’s approval—or even the lack of positive attention from her mother—has shaped her and also made her do a very similar thing to her own daughters with pushing her expectations on them. That said, even while knowing this, I had a hard time relating to or honestly even liking Edie. At one point, Edie thinks about the phrase “What would Jesus do?” but considers that only half the question for her as it would be followed by “and would [her mother] agree?” I think that can really give a reader the knowledge of how much she has—her entire life—been struggling to earn and keep her mother’s approval—plus how it’s affected her relationship with her own daughters.
As the older daughter, Lauren has taken most of the brunt of her mother and grandmother’s influence to always seem presentable and prepared, not willing to have a disapproving glance from either of them for anything. Lauren has often protected Chloe from her potential mistakes and her poor planning, but yet Lauren often feels like she has to earn her mother’s approval while she’s disapproving something Chloe is doing, which puts her at odds with her sister at times. It wasn’t a healthy relationship between the sisters because of the comparison that they ultimately face of the other and the small amount of approval and positive attention from their mother.
Chloe is definitely what you would call a “free-spirit” and while I do think she needed to plan just a wee bit more for the sake of her safety and pocket book, I did like her. She wanted the best for her mother and sister and loved them no matter how they treated her or expected her to act.
I think it would make sense when I say I found this book to be sad despite it not actually having a sad plot. These three women have missed out on so much—particularly Edie and Lauren—and missed out on the joy of family because of unreasonable expectations and then complaining or just not living life to the fullest. There was a major lack of God’s goodness and grace being shown by the two of them to others (mainly to Chloe) and even to themselves. Thankfully, there’s some good realizations for them all by the end of the book, but I would have loved to see it happen sooner so there could have been more happiness and healing on-page.
I liked that there was very little romance for this story and I liked Chloe’s faith for sure. I think it was a good story, but just not my favorite by this author. Clean overall though, which was a nice bonus.
See y’all on Friday with a new review!
*BFCG may (Read the review to see) recommend this book by this author. It does not mean I recommend all the books by this author.
*I received this book for free from the Publisher (Revell) for this honest review.
