Review: Right of Way by Lauren Barnholdt

Title: Right of Way
Author: Lauren Barnholdt 
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Release date: July 9th 2013
Source: Edelweiss
Format: egalley

Rating: 3/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

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…

Right of Way is the companion novel of Two-way Street and therefore I wanted to read it to find out what happened with Jordan and Courtney, if they end up together, how they were, and so on. In this book, Peyton the female protagonist is Courtney´s  cousin and story begins the day after a wedding she attended and there she meets with her ex-boyfriend Jace, a boy with whom she had a long distance relationship since he lives in Florida and she in Connecticut. She had plans to travel with a friend but that friend didn´t arrived, so she is left stranded in Florida with no way to return home, so Jace offers to take her to Connecticut and so begins the road trip begins! Peyton is not too happy at first, but she sees no other alternative.

This book is entertaining and I´ve liked lately contemporary books about road trips. The story is told from the point of view of Jace and Peyton (Alternating between them) and it begins in the present when they are no longer dating, but it also has several chapters that take place months before, when they met for the first time on Christmas vacations and how they met and we can see a little of their instant romance and they´re also another chapters that takes place after they broke up and we see how they go about their lives in their respective cities and how they keep obsessing with each other.

Overall, it's a light and fun read. And the character that I liked most was Jace, and he is super cute, sweet and a little more mature than Peyton, she is insecure, a little self-centered and very immature. What I didn´t like was the open ending (I don´t like open endings) and I felt it a little rushed, I would have liked a little more information about what happen next.

I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange of an honest review.

Two-Way Street by Lauren Barnholdt

Title: Two-Way Street
Author: Lauren Barnholdt
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Release date: June 26th 2007

Rating: 3.5/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

There are two sides to every breakup.

This is Jordan and Courtney, totally in love. Sure, they were an unlikely high school couple. But they clicked; it worked. They're even going to the same college, and driving cross-country together for orientation.

Then Jordan dumps Courtney -- for a girl he met on the Internet.

It's too late to change plans, so the road trip is on. Courtney's heartbroken, but figures she can tough it out for a few days. La la la -- this is Courtney pretending not to care.

But in a strange twist, Jordan cares. A lot.

Turns out, he's got a secret or two that he's not telling Courtney. And it has everything to do with why they broke up, why they can't get back together, and how, in spite of it all, this couple is destined for each other.

I recently discovered this book on the meme Top Ten Tuesday, I saw it mentioned in several blogs (can not remember if it was in the travel  or summer readings) but it caught my attention and after reading the synopsis I decided to read it.

The story begins on the day that Courtney and Jordan are going to do a road trip that will take three days from Florida to Massachusetts, a trip they planned to do together months before and everything would be great, if Jordan had not break up with her a few weeks before because he met a girl on the internet and to make matters worse Courtney's parents do not want to buy a plane ticket, which could avoid the three anxious days of having to spend them with her ​​ex-boyfriend on their way to college.

The book is told from Courtney´s and Jordan´s POV. So we can see both sides of the story during the trip, but what I liked most was that also I got to see the before and How the began dating, because despite being nearly four years in the same class, the didn´t frequented the same social circles and rarely had crossed a word before they start dating.

I had fun with Courtney, she has a great imagination and it was fun to watch how she imagines Jordan's new girlfriend and the kind of conversations they would have. And also she gets in a lot of trouble when she´s trying to make Jordan jealous . Meanwhile with Jordan his biggest problem is communication ..... he could have avoided many problems with Courtney if he had not followed the advice of his best friend B.J. (which I don´t think he should follow his advices) and have told his "secret" before it was too late.

Overall, Two-way Street is different from the contemporary books that I read regularly, is a light, refreshing, fun reading, it´s somewhat a little predictable but I really enjoyed it. And I can not wait to read its companion novel - Right of Way, which is about Peyton, she is Courtney’s cousin.