Right of Way Review

TITLE Right of Way
AUTHOR Lauren Barnholdt
PUBLICATION July 9th 2013 by Simon Pulse
READ June 19 to 20, 2013
SOURCE From the publisher for review

Can a road trip repair a romance gone wrong? Find out in this standalone companion to Lauren Barnholdt’s Two-way Street.

Here are Peyton and Jace, meeting on vacation. Click! It’s awesome, it’s easy, it’s romantic. This is the real deal.

Unless it isn’t. Because when you’re in love, you don’t just stop calling one day. And you don’t keep secrets. Or lie. And when your life starts falling apart, you’re supposed to have the other person to lean on.

Here are Peyton and Jace again, broken up but thrown together on a road trip. One of them is lying about the destination. One of them is pretending not to be leaving something behind. And neither of them is prepared for what’s coming on the road ahead…

And to think, this one held so much promise. I was really excited heading into Right Of Way. A road trip novel and a complicated romance? Yes, please. Unfortunately this story quickly began to feel rather childish and I failed to connect to any of the characters.

Peyton and Jace have had a complicated relationship, actually their relationship has ended. After meeting over Christmas, having a few good dates and then experiencing their relationship growing over the phone, their relationship was cut short when Jace stopped responding. It was a cold way for the relationship to end and Peyton was heartbroken. Luckily, we do get both perspectives here and we quickly find out that Jace is also heartbroken by something that Peyton never told him that led him to cut the relationship off. As these threads were revealed in alternating chapters and we got to find out why the relationship ended I was definitely left feeling underwhelmed. Jace’s reason for cutting Peyton out of his life is pretty selfish and absolutely childish. I know that sometimes in romances we don’t make the best choices, but this one was pretty darn ridiculous.

The two are reunited at Peyton’s uncles wedding and they finally decide to talk about what happened all those months ago. This story was pretty confusing at times. It took place after the wedding when Peyton was planning on running away from home to North Carolina only to be ditched by her best friend and have to hitch a ride with Jace. We also get chapters leading up to the wedding titled “before” that show how the two of them were feeling leading up to their big reunion. It got pretty confusing at times and I constantly had to flip back to find out who I was reading about and what time frame the story was currently taking place in. The two perspectives really didn’t feel distinct to me. Sure Jace’s POV had a few more swears in it, but the thought patterns and inner dialogue when thinking about things felt far too similar to be two different people.

Peyton was what I would call a runner. Instead of dealing with any of her issues head on, she finds a way to cut all the important conversations short that she doesn’t want to deal with. Her rather childish behavior for someone 17 years of age had me feeling detached from her actually to the point of strongly disliking her. Her mother is a shopaholic and has done some pretty thoughtless, cold things in the wake of her addiction and Peyton’s solution to this is to run away. I was so frustrated with her inability to deal with anything that was thrown at her in the story. When you look at Jace’s character I guess he was a bit of a runner too, after all he dropped Peyton like a hot potato when he found out her secret (which was really none of his business anyway.)

While the time line does jump all over the place in this one the plot is pretty typical. The last 40 pages or so I felt like I didn’t even need to bother reading because I knew exactly how everything was going to play out (and I was right by the way.) I don’t think there is anything in this novel that stands out among the million other contemporaries out there and if you are looking for a strong connection to characters, I wouldn’t look here.