Reviews with content warning for Blood - The Road Trip

Well, another Beth O'Leary book under my belt and still no redemption for this author. I'm sorry but this book was actually worse than The Switch. I had to trudge through 400 pages of this weak-ass tripe only to discover that this story literally had no direction and was basically a ploy to just get two idiotic character back together again.

Dylan is a weak-willed, spineless sap who cannot make his own decisions, chases after random girls, has an unhealthy toxic relationship with his family and best friend and is the epitome of male idiocy.

Addie has a strong temper but will to use it. The fact that she allowed herself to do anything more with Dylan than a summer fling is stupid and ridiculous, and just mad me hate her. Not only doe she follow after Dylan and take him back, but she allows him to basically make her life he'll because he won't break off his friendship with someone who is so clearly toxic and trying to break them up. If I was supposed to feel sorry for what happened with Etienne, I'm sorry I couldn't. She put herself in that position. I know it sounds harsh and I'm not condoning Etienne's behaviour one bit! But if you don't want to be in a situation like that you'd have been a loyal girlfriend and shut off his advances waaaaaay before it came to its conclusion. She was a weak-willed, pathetic wimp who basically flailed around the whole book.

And don't even get me started on Marcus. I don't care if he's supposed to be redeemed by his actions in the end of the book, his character is TOXIC!!! THIS BOOK SHOULD HAVE COME WITH TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR TOXIC RELATIONSHIP! It's not even remotely funny that someone could write a book which is supposed to be a light-hearted romcom only to have such a toxic character as A MAIN character and have us see how evil and backstabbing and vindictive and conniving he is and apparently be ok with his apparent "redemption"?? No. This is not ok.

This promotes the blind acceptance of people who have selfishly ruined lives and made life a living hell and emotionally hurt so many people just because they say sorry. As someone who has suffered gaslighting and toxic relationships in the past and is still affected by the aftereffects of all that trauma, it is not ok to have a character like this as part of the book and NOT include trigger warning. Not cool, Beth. Not cool.

The writing was fine...but theres nothing much else I can say about it. It wasn't full of purple prose, gorgeous dialogue, evocative descriptions. It was just so flat.

Plot was so bland I didn't enjoy it at all and slogged through for the sake of it being A buddy read. Glad I didn't spend more than 99p on this. The only interesting part was Deb and Rodney's character but that was such a minor part of the book it was not worth it.

For a romance there was barely any chemistry between Addie and Dylan and the spice...it would be an insult to the name of Spice to call the "romantic" and "steamy" content in this book "spice". Flat, boring, and really cringy.

I will be giving The Flatshare a try next and if it scores anything less than 2 stars that will be it. No more second chances for Beth O'Leary. If I could rate it lower than 1 star I would.

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citymouse's review against another edition

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4.0

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