Addie and Dylan broke up eighteen months ago.  They haven't seen each other since -- until Dylan and his friend Marcus rear end Addie and her sister Deb while both pairs are en route to their mutual friend's wedding.  Trapped together in a tiny car on a road trip where nothing seems to go right, Addie and Dylan choose to face the reason for their heartbreaking split and see if it's truly past repair.

I've loved all Beth O'Leary's books so far, and this one isn't an exception there.  But while this book technically satisfies the one rule to be a romance novel, I really don't think it is one.  TRT has all of O'Leary's trademark sharp wit, funny banter, and delightful characters, but it also dials the serious stuff all the way up to eleven.

Addie and Dylan are a "right person, wrong time" couple.  The first time they dated, they were both emotionally immature, and Dylan was embroiled in some very toxic relationships with other people in his life.  Because you get present and past alternating until a good two-thirds or three-fourths of the way through the book, the strides each character has made to become a better person are really apparent.  But it also means that the worst parts of them are front and center for a lot of the book.  I spent a long time trying to reconcile the Marcus who seems like a vaguely decent person with the Marcus who's so in pain that he can't stop lashing out at the people he loves, and the Dylan who seems emotionally aware with the Dylan who can't see what's plainly in front of his face.  

Because O'Leary's two previous books have a much more even balance of humor and heaviness, I think this book will be off-putting to some.  There's still a lot of wonderful road trip rompiness, but this book leans a lot more into the ideas of what and who is forgiveable, loving toxic people, and working through trauma than her earlier ones.  Because I expected more of a rom-com, there was an adjustment period, but once I got into the swing of it I was totally enthralled.  Dylan is a poet, too, which makes his narration so, so gorgeous -- we've gotten snippets of O'Leary's ability to write some truly gorgeous prose in the past but having a character that's also a writer really gave her some room to run with things and it is wonderful.

I think this is a book that's going to stick with me for a while.

TWs:

minor car accident, drug use and abuse, alcoholism, attempted sexual assault, emotionally abusive parents, homophobia, a mistaken case of infidelity