Boop and Eve's Road Trip

A rich blend of Southern charm and interwoven family relationships, this novel by first-time author Mary Helen Sheriff centers around- you guessed it – a road trip! This one is from Florida through Virginia and follows Eve, a young woman on the cusp of adulthood but still living under her mother Justine's thumb, and Boop, her feisty, funny, yet ultimately complex grandmother. Swirling around these two are Justine and Victoria, Boop's sister, and Ally, Eve's best friend and cousin, who's gone missing. What initially seems like a fun adventure quickly becomes something more, as Eve struggles to follow her own dreams even if it means breaking her mother's heart and Boop wrestles with whether to reveal the secret she's kept from her family for decades. Interspersed with amusing Southern sayings and laugh-old-loud scenes of Boop trying to get Eve to embrace her true self, are weighty themes of depression, mental illness, and birth defects. These characters argue at the drop of a hat, and honest communication sometimes gets lost in the shuffle, but ultimately we see there's a lot of love hiding behind the masks they present to the world and by the end, each has grown into a truer, more resilient, and better version of themselves.

I was given an ARC in exchange for an honest review of the book.