Boop and Eve's Road Trip

Fed up with college, a student embarks on a road trip to find her missing best friend with an unlikely co-pilot--her grandmother--in this debut novel. Believing she'll never make it as a fashion designer and reeling from the news that her lab partner crush has just started dating one of her friends, Eve Prince is flailing in college. She reaches out to her best friend and cousin, Ally, for support. But Ally's response is cryptic, stating she is in "big trouble" and "gonna disappear for a while." Eve is able to decipher Ally's location from her letter and asks her grandmother Boop if she can borrow her car to go to the family beach house in Virginia. Eve is surprised when Boop agrees on one condition--that she accompany her. What follows is a heartwarming trek through the South as grandmother and granddaughter uncover secrets held for generations as well as confront family issues, all while having a little fun. The relationship between Boop and Eve is the most appealing part of Sheriff's novel. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things going on in the plot, causing some confusion for readers. There is a distracting subplot that involves a character named Danielle Grusky, who takes over her husband's private investigation firm after he is injured in a car accident. Hired by Boop's sister, Victoria Liddel, Danielle follows Eve and her grandmother on their trip to discover Ally's whereabouts. Characters tend to pop in and out of the narrative, like Zed, a good-looking cop who pulls Eve and Boop over and ends up inviting the young woman to surf with him. The central point of the story seems to be about mental illness and how it can affect generations, as Boop tells Eve: "This world we live in ain't real sympathetic 'bout mental illnesses....Seems to me we'd all be a little less nuts if we spent our energy dealing with our crazy instead of hiding it." With the help of her grandmother, who also has experienced depression, Eve uses the trip to pull herself out of the funk she grappled with in college. The book would have benefitted from the inclusion of a family tree for easy reference as well as a map of the two women's route, as it's difficult to keep track of their whereabouts along the way. A touching intergenerational romp through the coastal South.

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