The Long Ride Home

July 15, 2017
Eighteen-year-old Juliet, also known as Harley for her beloved motorcycle, has two distinct sides to her personality. Harley is spirited, adventurous, motorcycle-riding, sometimes "speeding down a leather-black highway at a hundred miles an hour," but also soul-searching, lonely, and devastated by her beloved young mother's untimely death in a house fire. Out of her despair Harley formulates a plan to ride her Hog from Los Angeles, where she is living with her mother's close friend, to New York City, where she plans to scatter her mother's ashes. Her accomplice on the trip is her first boyfriend, Dean. They are strongly attracted to each other, but the relationship makes her confused and angry. She dreads having to give up her freedom and is afraid of committing to Dean too deeply for fear of being abandoned a second time. The other complication is the fact that she discovers that she is pregnant with Dean's child. Several cathartic events unfold during the road trip--finding the jewelry store where Harley's mother bought a favorite necklace, meeting her father for the first time, seeing a consoling vision of her mother, and finally her decision whether to carry the baby to term and what to do after. Harley's voice is earthy, colloquial, and wise, her first-person narration vivid and sometimes funny. Both Harley and Dean are white. Readers will resonate with this gritty, expletive-laced, fast-paced narrative about a strong young woman trying to come to terms with great loss. (Fiction. 14-18)

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August 1, 2017

Gr 9 Up-Harley, born Juliet to an actress and still reeling from the recent loss of her mother in a fire, embarks on a road trip to bring her mother's ashes home to New York. Since the fire, Harley, who feels at fault for leaving a candle burning, has been living with her mother's best friend, Mercy, in Los Angeles. Her father hasn't been involved in her life for a very long time. Harley plans to make the trip on her mother's beloved motorcycle. She tries to cope with PTSD, guilt, loss, and depression with drinking, but then her period is late, and fear of pregnancy are added to her already overflowing emotional plate. Mercy agrees to let Harley go because Dean, her one friend, crush, and unaware father of her baby is going along. Written in first person as a letter, this contemporary YA story line is much like Harley's bike trip- it's a long and, at times, painful road for the protagonist with good and difficult stops along the way. The recipient of the letter isn't revealed until the final pages. During the trip's detours, including a major scare near the end, Harley learns that once she accepts circumstances in life, home may have been with her all along. Explicit language, drug and alcohol references, and not-so-subtle sexual content make this more appropriate for older teens. VERDICT For general purchase, this realistic fictional tale about the meaning of home will have readers rooting for the down-on-her-luck protagonist and her geeky, irresistible suitor.-Laura Jones, Argos Community Schools, IN

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