Right of Way by Lauren Barnholdt

Right of Way by Lauren Barnholdt
Genre: Contemporary
Release Date: July 9, 2013
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Source: Publisher
Add it: Goodreads
Rating:

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…

When I saw that Lauren Barnholdt had another contemporary coming out, I was so excited. And while I didn’t know this was a companion novel to Two-way Street, since I apparently don’t know how to read book covers, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. Imagine how happy I was when S&S approved me on Edelweiss! That’s only happened to me once since this first time. Unfortunately (yes, negativity is coming), I couldn’t get into this. I just wasn’t a fan of the characters.

Jace was a total arse. I’m not a fan of him at all. One minute he’s talking about how he likes his “chicks”, and then he joked about his dog dying. No guy can joke about a dog dying and have me still like him.

Peyton was also annoying, although I certainly didn’t hate her as much as I hated Jace. She was kind of an idiot. I felt some sympathy for her, but we didn’t connect at all. Her problems could have easily been solved  by her talking to her father, but of course that would have been the easy way out.

The road trip itself was a bit of a crappy road trip. I was expecting the book to have a summery feel to it, considering it’s a contemporary, and it’s out in July. OH, and it’s actually set in the summer! Instead, the trip was boring and not summery at all, with far too much drama surrounding Jace and Peyton’s relationship. To make things worse, they claimed to be in love, despite not having spoken since that one time when they met the previous year.

I did have a good chuckle about the names in this though. Peyton, and her best friend Brooklyn. Remind anyone of One Tree Hill?

Right of Way was missing the spark that was in Two-way Street, which I really enjoyed when I read it a year or so ago. Unlike Jace and Peyton, Courtney and Jordan had history and chemistry. Right of Way was sincerely lacking in both elements, and I found myself being totally bored by 20%. I kept reading in the hope that it would get better, but meh. I really wish this had been up to standard.

On the plus side, Jace’s dog was cute.