Book Review: Amy & Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson

Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson

4/5 stars

(Finished reading 16/7/17)

Adventurous, heart-warming, fun.

Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour follows Amy Curry who has recently lost her father in a car accident and is moving to Connecticut from California. Her mother sends an old family friend, Roger, to drive Amy across the USA and the two of them soon find themselves on a crazy road-trip. With both physical and emotional obstacles, Amy and Roger are forced to fight through these, but the hardest of all, accepting their road-trip together must end someday, which means returning to their own realities.

This was such a great read! I actually read this one mostly on the plane on my way to my holiday and it made the concept of travelling seem so much fun! This is a must read road-trip/travel book and I highly recommend to anyone looking for something to read whilst on the go! The settings of the book were really what made this book for me. Being from the UK, I did have to google a map of the USA so I could follow Amy and Roger’s journey throughout the book! But the locations were so vivid through the writing, I felt utterly immersed in each location. It gave me a feeling of wanderlust and the desire to fly across the world, get in a car, and explore the US! As I went into this book knowing very little about the certain states of America mentioned (other than what I have learnt through popular culture, movies and the internet) I felt like I got to know each state really well. I learnt fun facts about each and was able to almost personify each state based on the descriptions. This was very well done as I’ve read a lot of American books set in America and managed to learn very little about the location itself, however this book really outshone these books with it’s wonderful emphasis on its setting.

I also really loved the unique format of this book. Throughout the book, we are presented with playlists, receipts, photos, postcards, notebook pages and other visual features. This definitely added to the story and I really loved reading this because it broke up the story so nicely. I also recommend looking on YouTube or Spotify for the playlists mentioned in the book as people have made the exact playlists found in the book so you could listen along as you read! I didn’t personally do this as I mostly read this either on the plane or the beach so wasn’t able to but I think it would be really cool to try out! I’d definitely like to read more books in this format and I’d love to see more writers making use of story-telling modes other than prose.

The themes and the plot throughout the book were good, I liked the slight mystery involving Amy’s Dad and the accident but also seeing how Amy grew and developed in an attempt to get over her grief. I liked Roger’s easygoing-ness despite his own issues as well as how Amy’s perception of him altered throughout the novel. My only slight criticism that stopped me giving this book the 5 stars I really wanted to give it, was the ending. I was loving this book but started to get worried when I noticed I had only a few pages left and it was nowhere near as tied up as I wanted it to be! The ending felt very sudden and unfinished. It felt way too open and didn’t have enough closure, in my opinion. I think I just would have liked a little more on Amy and Roger, perhaps an epilogue projecting a few months on from the end of the trip. I think this would have satisfied me more as an ending. But all in all, the plot developed nicely across the book and was fast paced enough to keep me reading!

Before this book, I’d only read one other Morgan Matson book, Since You’ve Been Gone, which I also loved. I definitely want to read more of her books, I think she is queen of summery YA contemporary reads and can’t wait to read another this summer! But I highly recommend Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour as a good place to start if you’re new to her writing or even if you just want something straightforward and easy to read when you’re on holiday! I guarantee you’ll be wanting to go on a road-trip by the time you finish the book though!