Four for the Road

Starred review from August 29, 2022
Struggling to process his mother’s death, New Jersey teenager Asher Hunting embarks on a revenge quest in this riveting road trip epic by Reilly (Words We Don’t Say). Asher has been attending a grief support group ever since his mother was killed by a drunk driver “twelve months three weeks one day six hours and fourteen minutes ago.” There, he meets fellow teens dry-witted Will and motorcycle-loving Sloane, as well as elderly, cantankerous Henry, and asks them to accompany him on a road trip to Graceland. Each of them has their own reason for going, but Asher doesn’t tell them what sparked this excursion: he’s considering killing his mother’s murderer (“Which way would be better, the slow way or the fast way or no way at all?”). As Asher uncovers more about the accident, he’ll have to weigh the price of catharsis, and what he’s willing to sacrifice to get it. Reilly uses empathetic prose, and Asher’s by turns biting and achingly earnest voice (“Everyone wants to pretend that somehow this will all be okay if we just go to therapy and eat cookies and disappear until we’re better”), to expertly portray the white-cued group’s journey through individual and shared grief. Ages 14–up. Agent: Molly O’Neill, Root Literary.

Starred review from July 1, 2022
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* Asher Hunting can tell you the exact time a drunk driver crashed an 18-wheeler into his mother's SUV, killing her. In the subsequent year, Asher has grappled with survivor's guilt, which is exacerbated when the driver is not convicted. Asher's deep, desperate grief makes the people around him uncomfortable; they want him to "get over it." In that year, Asher has devised a plan for revenge involving a road trip to Memphis, ostensibly to take the driver's daughter to her prom--he catfished her--but his real intention is to kill the driver. He recruits three members of the two grief support groups he attends: Henry, an elderly man who brings the ashes of his late wife, Evelyn, with him in an urn; and a boy and a girl his age, Will and Sloane. Asher doesn't tell them his reason for the trip, but it turns out that each has his or her own reason for going to Memphis. They trade stories about the people they lost, which seems to help all of them. Reilly explores the avenues of grief most people don't encounter until they are older, and she does it with bright, funny characters who hold onto one another and the truths that unfold on their trip. All go through a transformation that bolsters them, and they draw together as a family to navigate their grief.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from June 1, 2022
Three New Jersey teens and a semisenile senior citizen, all grieving family losses, take a road trip to Graceland. All four are devastated, vulnerable, and looking for ways beyond therapy groups to ease the pain. Henry seizes the chance to carry his beloved wife's ashes to Memphis, and Sloane comes along to steal and ride a Harley down Beale Street wearing her father's leather jacket. Will's motives are less defined until the sight of a group of young cancer patients outside St. Jude's helps him with the gnawing loss of his little brother to neuroblastoma. Unlikely as it seems, readers may end up rooting for 17-year-old cyberstalker Asher, who narrates in snarky, Holden Caulfield-style sentences. Asher is catfishing Grace, the daughter of the drunk driver who killed his mother--and plans to murder Grace's dad. (Though set up to be a victim, Grace turns out to be a redoubtable scene-stealer and one of the book's best surprises.) So overwhelming is the load of trauma they each carry that it's hard to see how their journey could end on a buoyant note, but Reilly pulls it off by developing rich friendships while artfully slipping in comical elements on the way to a climactic whirl of laughter, tears, budding romance, and well-placed insights. Not to mention references throughout to Kierkegaard, The Little Prince, stages of grief, and coping strategies like self-forgiveness. The cast presents White. A heady round trip, heavy baggage and all, from heartbreak to healing. (Fiction. 13-17)

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.