Book Review: Side Trip

Synopsis:

Her deceased older sister, Judy, made lists. Now Joy Evers sets out from Southern California en route to New York via Route 66, determined to check off every item on Judy’s bucket list. At the conclusion of her cross-country road trip, she will be reunited with her fiancee, Mark, and they will begin the next chapter of their lives together.

Singer-songwriter Dylan Westfield has a serious case of wanderlust and a broken-down car. Stranded at a diner someone between Los Angeles and Flagstaff, Arizona, he meets Joy. They are complete opposites. She’s energetic and focused, he’s moody. She has carefully plotted her course to New York, but he’s spontaneous. Joy believes in love at first sight, but because of his rock and roll upbringing, Dylan views love as a complication he wants no part of.

But Joy has a brand-new convertible.

They strike a deal. She’ll drive him to New York. He’ll pay for gas.

Three rules will apply: they won’t exchange last names; what happens on the road, stays on the road; and if one of them wants to take a side trip, they both must agree.

Joy and Dylan’s story spans a decade and explores what ifs. What if Joy and Dylan had exchanged last names? What if he’d told her she made him believe love was worth the risk? And what if they hadn’t made that second deal when they found themselves unable to say goodbye?

Side Trip is a tale of love, loss, and the unexpected routes that life takes.

Review:

Kerry Lonsdale is the bestselling author of All the Breaking waves, the “Everything” series (Everything We Keep, Everything We Leave Behind, and Everything We Give), and Last Summer, of which she says Last Summer was the most challenging to plot and write. So she was ready for magic to strike — and it did while she was exercising in the garage gym of her Northern California home. She relates the “the entire concept — the beginning, middle, and end — [of Side Trip] literally dropped into my head. By the time I fnished, I had character names and backstories.” Instantly, Side Trip “became that book I had to write before I could write anything else. Joy and Dylan were so real to me, . . . and I needed to flesh them out ASAP.”

It’s 2010 and Joy has never forgiven herself for what happened the night her beloved older sister, Judy, died tragically. Convinced that the accident that claimed Judy’s life was her fault, Joy has never confessed her involvement to her parents. Instead, she has devoted herself to living the life that Judy never got to live. In college she majored in the subject Judy loved, when she gets to New York City she will begin working at Judy’s dream job, and she has adopted Judy’s way of dressing while taking the road trip Judy planned for herself. Along the way, she is seeing sights and eating foods that appealed to Judy, and listening to the music Judy loved. It’s all in the name of atoning for her own behavior and, hopefully, assuaging her shame and guilt.

Joy accepted Mark’s marriage proposal and the ornate engagement ring he presented her. She didn’t want to tell him that the ring was over the top, but Dylan voices that it doesn’t seem right for her. She acknowledges that Mark does not know her “the way he should.” Still, she does love him, and has convinced herself that she wants to have children with him and they will have a happy marriage. Like Joy’s parents, Mark has no knowledge of Judy’s list or why Joy is determined to check off every enumerated item. He wanted to join her on the road trip to New York, but she insisted on making the journey alone.

She has barely commenced her cross-country trek when she stops at a retro-styled diner for a cheeseburger and fries, consistent with Judy’s love of 1950s culture and clothing. Seated at a table, she looks out the window and notices a handsome guy in the parking lot who is clearly exasperated because his car won’t start. Joy holds her breath as he enters the diner and approaches her table. Judy would have called him “dreamy.” Joy permits him to use her cell phone, but finds him rude and presumptuous as he grabs the list and studies it. Still, she’s intrigued because he’s a musician and Joy is obsessed with music. When Dylan explains that he needs to get to Flagstaff because he has a gig there in the evening, Joy agrees to give him a ride.

Dylan also has secrets. He is actually on a journey dictated by his late father as a term and condition of receiving his inheritance. Dylan suffers from stage fright, a condition that baffled and frustrated his hard-drinking, hard-loving musician father. Dylan has dreams and goals for his own place in the music industry, and completing the trip plotted by his father is the key to realizing them.

After their first stop in Flagstaff, Joy and Dylan embark on a companionable sojourn along Route 66 in her convertible Volkswagen that will change both of their lives. As they negotiate side trips and navigate from town to town where Dylan must perform each night — and notify his father’s lawyer as soon as he has survived another nerve-wracking gig — the two travelers learn about each other and themselves. Dylan questions Joy’s commitment to living a life that isn’t really hers, seeing beyond her fussy blouses and ponytails to the beautiful former daredevil competitive surfer and skateboarder who is incapable of freeing herself from the past and living her own authentic life. Joy sees beyond the man who claims that he has no interest in a relationship because it is impossible for a professional musician to successfully meld endless years on the road and a family life. She recognizes Dylan’s talent and vulnerability, and finds herself drawn to the man who can deliver a flawless performance if he can just look out into the audience and see her there, supporting him. “Performing onstage wasn’t just a physical workout for him. It took an emotional toll.”

Of course, as they draw closer to New York, they develop deep feelings for each other. Dylan becomes “the tide pulling her in his direction . . . sunlight drenching her skin, warming her. . . . But where did that leave Mark?” Questioning her decision to marry Mark wasn’t part of her plan. And Dylan questions his aversion to romance and relationships because he wants to spend more time with Joy for whom he is developing new, foreign feelings. But they only spend one week together. It’s a brief, magical time — not real life.

To Lonsdale’s credit, her characters are honorable and admirable. Neither of them wants to hurt Mark, the worried fiancee who has no idea that Joy has picked up a stranger with whom she is spending every waking moment as she makes her way to him and the life they are about to share. Hence, their agreement that their friendship will end when they reach their destination. Predictably, however, parting is not easy and they negotiate another contract term because embarking on the separate lives they planned before meeting.

In the hands of a less skilled writer, Lonsdale’s magical story could have felt contrived and cloying. But Lonsdale deftly paces the development of Joy and Dylan’s growing attraction to each other so that their inevitable acknowledgment of their feelings is believable. Less credible is the subsequent deal they make, but Joy is committed to Mark and their relationship, and not yet ready to abandon her determination to heal her own emotional turmoil through steadfast adherence to her carefully constructed trajectory. Joy is forced to learn that we “get to choose how we react to tragedy.” As the truth about Judy’s death and Dylan’s tumultuous upbringing take their toll over time, Joy and Dylan each reach their own breaking point and must finally come to terms with their pasts and choices. Of course, both Joy and Dylan know each other’s true identity and keep track of one another as time passes. Lonsdale says she “was fascinated not only with the concept of two strangers meeting on the road who decide to travel together, but what happens after the road trip ends” and she plumbs those details over the course of an ensuing decade.

Joy and Dylan are endearing, sympathetic, and likable, and Lonsdale’s compassion for her characters’ struggles is evident. Side Trip does suffer from what reads like an inability on Lonsdale’s part to pick an ending for her story and fully commit to it. For that reason, readers may find themselves resenting that Lonsdale manipulates their emotional reaction to her characters’ plight a bit. She can be forgiven, however, when the arc of the story is revealed, along with the message she wants readers to take away from a tale that she readily and accurately characterizes as “pure escapism reading.”

Lonsdale’s goal is for readers to “realize that life is short and shouldn’t be lived with regrets. That we should live the life we want to, and not the life others think we should live.” And that message is clearly and lovingly conveyed through a conclusion that may feel like a concession but is, ultimately, satisfying. Side Trip is engrossing and entertaining — a perfect book to read by the pool or on the beach, immersed in the lives of two people who are clearly going to find their way to their true feelings and each other, and savoring and pondering the numerous what ifs along the way. In one’s own life, as well as in Joy’s and Dylan’s.