Me on Amy & Roger's Epic Detour

Title: Amy & Roger's Epic Detour
Author: Morgan Matson
Release Date: May 4, 2010
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Pages: 344 (Hardcover)

No new In My Mailbox this week. No new books, plus I'm starting my Christmas Re-reading. It's all good. I've read about 118 new books this year. :)

So, this book. It was a mix of the summary and the cover that made me want to read this. The cover is adorable, and Amy and Roger are lots of fun. Well, Amy was fun while Roger was semi-obsessed with his ex-girlfriend and it takes the detour road-trip to get him to realize that maybe she wasn't right for him. The ex, not Amy. Amy and Roger are cute together. :)

Amy's life kinda sucks: her mother's making her move from California to Connecticut between her junior and senior year (grade 11 & 12), her brother's off in rehab, she's ignoring her friend's e-mails, and her dad recently died in a car accident. Now she has to drive their car to Connecticut with a guy she barely remembers from her childhood. Yeah, things aren't perfect.

Amy needs this trip and the detour that Roger proposes. She needs to break free, to live, to cope, to survive, to take control of her life again and live it instead of just going through the motions. She needs to move on from the accident, and Roger helps her do that, even if it upsets her mother. Yeah, well, if I was Amy and I'd been forced to move across the country, I'd take my time getting there, too.

The story was good, the characters funny, but what drew me in were the little pictures and journal entries and driving playlists and all the extra bits. I love bits like that in books. It makes it feel real and less like a bunch of words. In a book like this, it needed it. The receipts from buying gas and chocolate bars, the hotel reservation cards, the e-mails and postcards. So cool.

If you're looking for a book that's fun and sweet and sort of a character-building exercise for a girl pushing forward with her life after a tragic loss, then this is the book for you. Well, how about you go read it just because. It was a fun read. :)