Review: Open Road Summer

Title: Open Road Summer
Author: Emery Lord
Pub Deets: April 2014, Bloomsbury
Series/Stand Alone: Stand Alone
Source: Purchased

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In a sentence or so: Reagan is on tour with her best friend and country superstar Lilah Montgomery. Reagan needs to heal, to grow, and she knows the best way to do that is to have the best summer ever with her best friend...and then a boy comes into the picture who turns everything on its head and has Reagan scrambling to figure out who she is and what she wants.

Yeah, I know this book is getting all of the praise and that it's like THE summer book and Matt Finch is the end all be all of YA love interests right now.

And I'm here to tell you that all of this hype is totally legit.

OPEN ROAD SUMMER is fun but sincere, funny but heartfelt, sexy but sweet. Emery Lord has written some deep characters that are incredibly addicting to read about and you will root for each and every one of them. Seriously, you will.

If you're looking for a coming-of-age story with a fresh perspective, that celebrates the glory of best friends and first loves, then OPEN ROAD SUMMER will totally be your jam.

Fave Quote: "The fog lifted from the scenes of my life, so clear that I couldn't believe I'd never seen it before: I'm better than all this. I'm better than all the losers I'd been dating for cheap thrills. My therapist said my 'high-risk choices' stemmed from a 'distorted sense of self-worth.' But I know I'm smart, and I work hard when I care abut the work, and I actually have goals that matter to me. Sure, I can regularly make shit decisions, but they're just choices, and I can make different ones. And finally, I wanted to." (126)

Fix Er Up: Debby over at Snuggly Oranges (a seriously rad blog and blogger, fyi) pointed out that there is a good deal of girl hate in OPEN ROAD SUMMER. It's true. And I'm not a huge fan of that. However, girl hate is real and it adds to the development of Reagan's character so I understand why it's there. Reagan is a prickly character and that's part of her appeal - but girl hate still sucks.



  1. I still need to read this!!!! Glad you enjoyed it and that it managed to live up to the hype!

  2. This book is really good. BUT.... I couldn't get over the 'girl hate' as you call it. It's alright if you can get past that aspect. Makes a nice summertime read.

  3. I'm glad the hype is legit because this is just sitting on my kindle waiting for me to dive in and I am so excitedddddddd.



    As hard as the girl hate was to read, I felt like it was there for a reason & depicted such an important truth about the cycle of rejection. While I it's totally legit for people to hate it because of that, I thought it was fantastic that Emery included it. Difficult and sad? Sure, but I also felt that it totally served a purpose.

    So happy you loved this one!


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