By Morgan Matson Amy & Roger's Epic Detour Paperback – 28 Aug 2014

I have put off reading this book for a long time, and I don't know why! Every time I started reading it, I would put it back down and move on to a different book. I think for the most part it was because I didn't want to set myself up for possible disappointment. I haven't been enjoying reading so much, and I've been having some bad luck with the books I've picked up. This was one book that people were raving about and the majority of reviews were amazing that I really didn't want to be let down.Well, let's just say, I stayed up all night reading it. All. Night. I have a newborn, and I'm supposed to be getting as much sleep as possible, but I stayed up ALL NIGHT. I cannot remember the last time a book made me stay up all night until I had read every last page. I really don't.This book did.I have read On the Road, and I have read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and I have read many other road trip based classics and stories, yet none of them, and I mean none, made me want to get up, pack my stuff and head out on a road trip. This one though...this book made me want to do just that.I wanted to pack and get in the car and drive around, stopping at random places, staying at different places (including hotels, friends houses and even the car), meeting people, trying out all kinds of food, befriending strangers, seeing some pretty amazing sights and listening to awesome road trip music. What I didn't want to do was get high, sleep around with strangers, get pulled over by cops, experiment with drugs and almost get myself killed.All of that aside, the story was also great and extremely compelling. The two main characters, Amy and Roger, were great fun to go on this trip with. Despite Amy's initial awkwardness, I loved that from the beginning she embraced this trip with Roger and accepted going on one major detour to get to her final destination. Obviously, we later learn that Roger had an ulterior motive to going on this trip and taking the detour, but Amy embraced that as well and was very understanding of the situation. Something I probably wouldn't have been able to pull off were I in her shoes.Amy's dad had just passed away, and although we don't find out how it happened till the very end, we are aware that in one way or another it was Amy's fault and Amy blames herself for it and is punishing herself for it. We also know that it involves a car, because Amy refuses to drive one ever since her dad's death - which is why Roger comes into the picture to drop her off halfway across America to meet her mom who had left a month prior to get the house and everything ready.This road trip was a brilliant way to view the character development of both Amy and Roger. It was a great opportunity to see them both change as they went from one stop to another. With every song they listened to, every conversation they had, every meal they ate and every night they spent together, they opened up a little more, changed a little more and in Amy's case came back to life a little more. I loved them together, even just as friends. I loved their interactions and the way they went about their journey. I loved the fun moments, but I also loved the sad moments, the emotional moments and the angry moments. I loved it all.This is a great book. One for the road.

Aw. Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour is a lovely book. Maybe because I’m just off the back of Delicate Monsters, which shocked and disturbed me greatly, but Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour gave me the warm fuzzies.The premise is that Amy’s family have recently suffered the loss of her father and she, her mother and her brother have basically splintered and each now live as far away from each other as it’s possible to be whilst still being on the continental U.S. Amy’s mother has just sold their family home and wants Amy to bring her car up from California to Connecticut. Trouble is, since the car crash that killed her dad, Amy is shy to get behind the wheel of a car again. Enter Roger... Roger doesn’t have anything like Amy’s tragic past, but he has his issues too and over the course of the book and an Epic Detour from the route plan Amy’s mother provided them with, they start to let go of the pain of their pasts and look forward to the future.The plot is a kind of self-discovery thing, and also an America-discovery thing. I live in England, so there were points where I had to have my iPad next to me with a picture of the U.S. so I could work out where they were talking about, but that was a good thing. I learned stuff. There wasn’t instalove (good), I really liked Roger’s thing about explorers, and I really, really liked the ending and the way things between Amy and Roger panned out.Amy was a great MC. She was witty and bright, even in the midst of grief and proved to be a great tourguide of the U.S.! One of the only problems I had about this book was such a ridiculous thing, I don’t even know if I should mention it, but I’m going to anyway. Here goes:My friend’s dad is called Roger.Ach! I know you should look past a name to the character the author is trying to portray and focus on that, but every time I read ‘Roger’, all I could think was, ‘Roger, my friend’s dad’ and I got a picture of a middle-aged guy with a comb-over and a protruding chin.And this totally isn’t the author’s fault: she doesn’t know Roger-my-friend’s-dad, but I couldn’t help it. I just kept picturing him.Still, despite this I really liked Roger. I like it when an author doesn’t feel the need to have her male MC all brooding and mysterious and constantly leaving the female MC wondering if he likes her or if he’s off hooking up with loads of other girls, and gives some love action to the boy-next-door type instead. This is good. This is progress.Okay, and while we’re on the subject of boys, can we get a WOOP! WOOP! IDIOT ALERT! for Amy’s ex-boyfriend, Michael? Seriously, who sleeps with their girllfriend for the first time half an hour after her dad’s funeral? Who DOES that? Plus, also: why wasn’t he at her dad’s funeral. Why did he leave her to deal with it on her own? <Shakes head>.So in spite of the unfortunate-Roger-nomenclature and the duckweed ex, I’d still thoroughly recommend this book.