Margo Gentry’s life is perfect. She loves her job as a DJ for Manhattan’s only country music station, and she has a great boyfriend who accepts her need to avoid marriage and tolerates her Elvis obsession-even the velvet Elvis painting in their bedroom.
But then it all falls apart. The radio station changes formats and fires all the DJs. Margo’s boyfriend decides he wants kids and a house in the suburbs and kicks her to the curb. And to top it all off, her Mom is getting married-for the 11th time! -and expects Margo to be there as maid of honor.
With no job and no place to live, Margo has to bunk on the couch of her best friend, Chris, whose revolving bedroom door has played host to half the women in New York-at least, the ones who pass his “kiss test.” Worse, he’s insisting she attend her mother’s wedding, and he’s personally driving her cross-country to ensure she shows up.
Forget about surviving the road trip-can their friendship survive The Kiss Test?
So Margo’s perfect life goes into the proverbial toilet pretty fast. Within a few weeks she loses her job, her boyfriend (who’s pretty crappy & judgmental and she’s good to be rid of him if you ask me) and then of course her apartment, since she lived with her boyfriend. After the job loss but before the boyfriend breakup she decides that before she finds another DJ job this is her opportunity to have the vacation that she’s always wanted – a trip to Graceland.
After the apartment loss Margo heads to her friend Chris’s house to seek shelter but due to a freak accident falls down the stairs of his building. Because of the subsequent concussion she has dizziness issues and can’t drive. Chris offers to drive her on her trip but only if she’ll agree to attend her mothers 11th wedding and be nice about it. She agrees because the trip is important to her but she’s not happy at all.
Chris and Margo take off for Memphis and have a great time…up until they don’t. You see it seems like life is out to get Margo. It’s one of those “everything that can go wrong, does” scenarios and Chris doesn’t help at all with his womanizing and administration of the “kiss test” happening far too frequently for Margo’s liking. But she’s not sure why it upsets her so much. Could there be more to her feelings for Chris than best friends?
This was a fun but slightly bizarre book for me to read. It had fun and funny parts to it but it also had the bizarre and ridiculous at times as well. Some of the things that Margo does are just crazy and I wondered what she was thinking! But then she would act normal again. I don’t think I’m expressing myself very well here. There was truly so many things going on in this story you would have to read it to appreciate my lack of comprehensive verbage! lol
Basically Margo feels that the trip and an award that she won for being Best Country DJ are the things that are going to make her life A-ok. In that aspect I thought she was completely living in denial. She was smarter than she let on but I guess the downward spiral of her life in such a short time kind of shorted her brain a bit. Despite that I really liked her personality a lot. She was strong and independent and knew what she wanted in life – or at least thought she did.
Then there was Chris – her best friend. Chris was a business owner, a good and loyal friend and had been there for Margo since she was about 10 years old. He had made up this Kiss Test to try on women and basically it was a gauge to tell him if he wanted to take the kiss further – like into bed. The man was kind of a ho. lol Now Chris had never tried the test on Margo but one night on their trip she egged him on until he did and guess where they ended up? That’s right – in bed together. Margo then tried to keep their relationship on friendship ground but that wasn’t really working out.
In the end the book was about fear. Fear of failing, fear of the unknown, fear of having a bad life, fear of repeating others mistakes, fear of taking a chance on life. But Margo ended up coming to a few interesting conclusions about her life and I liked seeing the light bulbs going off in her head. The book was really good despite some craziness and some omg I can’t believe Chris just did that moments. I really do recommend the book if you want a fun road trip type read. The romance in the book is definitely not front and center for most of the book but the latter half of it had enough to sooth my romantic heart.
Rating: 4 out of 5
The friends to lovers theme is one of my favorites. This sounds like a fun variant of that theme, despite the few niggles you had.
Great review, Tracy!
Thanks for the good review. I can't wait to read it myself.
Janna – I really love the friends to love theme too. This one took a while to get to the lovers part but it really showed how much the friendship meant to both of them.
Thanks!
Dr J – It's a good one! 🙂
I can feel my hand twitching to slap characters without even having read the book! 😀
Good review – I bought this book a few weeks ago b/c of the friends to lovers theme but I haven't picked it up yet.
And road trip books! Those are fun, when done right. 😛
Chris – Sometimes you just gotta do it! lol
Ames – It's fun, yes, frustrating at times but overall I really liked it.