Get Hold Of I Thought You Said This Would Work Formulated By Ann Wertz Garvin Shared As Booklet

RECOMMEND!! What a great read, I laughed and cried and laughed until I cried, Summer was by far the best character here, This book was everything entertaining and heartwarming, The characters seemed unbelievable and ridiculous, The book seemed like it was trying too hard to be both funny and deep, but I got annoyed at all of the characters multiple times.
The situations weren't believable, and it wasn't humorous enough to forgive that, Sometimes books come to you at the right time and they soothe all the hurts and fears in your heart, This is one of those books, This book just hit me at the right time, I enjoyed this authors last book, and she is local to me, I had been waiting for the library hold and then actually looked at the Amazon Prime “first picks” at the last second in April, and there it was, for me.
It felt serendipitous.

I found the main character, Samantha so relatable, The story is funny, bordering ridiculous which somehow makes it more real, It is at the core a story of woman friendship, how easy or tangled it can be, the roles we play, our blind spots to “the big picture”.
I think because the women were my age, I also found myself nodding with some of the self deprecating humor, I laughed and quite literally cried about mid way, I had to stop, order and send a copy to a friend because I think the story could resonate with her too, I enjoy this author, her humor and language feels like my own, My only regret is that I gobbled it up so fast A road trip can drive anyone over the edgeespecially two former best friendsin bestselling author Ann Garvins funny and poignant novel about broken bonds, messy histories, and the power of forgiveness.


Widowed Samantha Arias hasnt spoken to Holly Dunfee in forever, Its for the best. Samantha prefers to avoid conflict, The blisteringly honest Holly craves it, What they still have in common puts them both back on speed dial: a mutual love for Katie, their best friend of twentyfive years, now hospitalized with cancer and needing one little errand from her old college roomies.


Its simple: travel crosscountry together, steal her loathsome exhusbands VW camper, find Katies diabetic Great Pyrenees at a Utah rescue, and drive him back home to Wisconsin.
If itll make Katie happy, no favor is too big one hundred pounds, too daunting two thousand miles, or too illegal ish, even when a boho Dlist celebrity hitches a ride and drives the road trip in fresh directions.


Samantha and Holly are following every new turntoward second chances, unexpected romance, and selfdiscoveryand finally blowing the dust off the secret that broke their friendship.
On the open road, theyll try to put it back togetherfor themselves, and especially for the love of Katie, Buckle up your seat belts boys and girls, this is gonna be a long one, I don't know the last time I've liked and hated a book so much,

There are moments in this novel that really worked well and there were moments that were so eyerollingly bad that I wondered if I was even reading the same thing.
This is a book that is both lighthearted and comedic yet at the same time seriously depressing and as someone who loved A Man called Ove, I thought this would be a novel right up my alley.
Sometimes I can't tell if I'm just trying to take this book too seriously or not, but it just did not feel nearly as insightful or comedic as I was hoping for it to be.


The set up for the book is excellent, The opening chapters really create good groundwork for the conflicts between the three friends and the dodgy conversations they have pull you along as it dangles hints of what had happened between themyears ago like fish bait.
I was really excited to see what would happen on the road trip, The writing is fresh and you can tell right off the bat its supposed to be a more lighthearted book on serious topics, but despite the lighter take, there are also moments that are thoughtful and serious and the balance between the two prevents the book from becoming a depression sludge to read.


That being said, when you take a step back and think about it, this book is also very seriously depressing, Every character has either a sad backstory someone dies, divorce, disease, etc, or is going through something off the same list of things, This is the most dysfunctional cast of characters I'd read in a long time and Samantha is probably the worst of them all, Given that the book is written from her perspective, we get a full view of her wallowing in her own sadness and low selfesteem, My only issue is that I don't know if showing so many people in pain was really necessary for the point of the book and if anything it might have been overdone a little.


Despite the strong opening, I found the pacing of the book to be really off, With the first person perspective, Sam gives a decent amount of backstory dumping at the beginning of the book, It was tolerable at first because it seemed necessary to set up the dynamic of the friends, but she keeps going and most of the first two thirds of the book is about Sam wallowing in her own pool of insecurities with interspersed moments of plot sprinkled in.
The story doesn't really pick up until "the confrontation" that about the things that were hinted at the start of the book,

Also there was one scene at the beginning that really stuck out like a sore thumb to me, We are introduced to a potential love interest withinpages of the book and it felt like it was really shoved down my throat, Sam and Beautiful Man Who even nicknames a cute guy "Beautiful Man" I physically cringed every time that showed up, It just felt like failed quirkiness, who are complete strangers at this point, have a small conversation in which BM first mentions that he's married and then, completely unprompted and unrelated to the rest of the conversation, pops that they're getting divorced.
The part that really baffles me isn't that he mentions the divorce but the way that he did it because it was so unprompted and uncalled for.
Tangentially on top of that, there was no point in making BM married and getting divorced, I thought it would play a part in their future conversations and maybe even brush up on topics related to the emotional stress of divorce, but it came up maybe once and BM seems to be living entirely emotionally impartial to divorcing his wife.
That scene would have made so much more sense if he had been single to begin with,

To bounce off of this, there were a TON of forced plot points in the book that made no sense and one big plot hole in what happenedyears ago which sorta ruins the whole point of the story.
Minor spoilers ahead: Did Sam not think for one moment to try to reach out to her best friend ofyears after she just disappears off the face of the earth Did Holly not consider the possibility that the letter she left was never read at all Where did this premonition that Holly hates Sam even begin Also I have a hard time believing that someone would hold a grudge foryears.
People change andyears is A LOT of time, Did neither of them really not try to contact each other at all in the pastyears Something just doesn't add up for me and

I don't know if I just missed something or what.
Is there a world where a situation like this could happen Yeah, but is it likely Probably not,

The weakest and most conflicting part of the book for me were the characters, Summer was definitely my favorite character in the book, She may be the most generic and trope filled character of the book, but she was the sort of character I was expecting something absurd, a bit predictable and lighthearted, but really brought the story to life and lifted it out of the hole of depression it could've easily fallen in.


BUT, Samantha. Oh Samantha. Me and Sammie should've vibed so well together, I understood her low selfconfidence and her thought process behind if she just didn't commit to a relationship she wouldn't be hurt, I related to her history on a personal level, but honestly, I hated her as a character, Afteryears, there was no progression, no change, no character development, She was stagnated in the same mentality that she had in hers and it was so disappointing to read, Why addyears to a story when nothing happens in thoseyears Also tell me why she claims to be socially awkward yet has the most normal conversations with two conveniently attractive and single men who are into her It just felt like that completely defeated the purpose of making her the antisocial weirdo.


I'm not, so I'm no pro at this, but given theyear old women that I do know, this book doesn't feel like it's about women at that age.
They're too quirky and their actions too simple and naïve at times to be coming from someone who's lived in society foryears, The way they think, the way they act and argue just follow too much like people in theirs, If you were to remove any mention of theyears ago backstory, I would have legit thought these girls were in their midtwenties,

Now it might seem like I'm taking a massive dump on this book, but what I'm trying to say is that despite all these pretty glaring flaws, I still enjoyed the book a lot.
There were moments where I truly laughed out loud and some of the selfreflection moments did make me stop and think, Humor in books is a bit hit or miss with me, but I liked this sort of sarcastic "life sucks and you deal with it" sort of humor.
At the end of the day, I had good fun reading the book and while I'm not sure if I would recommend it to others, I certainly don't regret reading it.
Cancer accepted no substitutes, That was why we all shuddered when the word was uttered, Cancer was synonymous with loss of control for everyone involved,

Katie has cancer, Again. And, she has a simple request,

She needed her two feuding friends to get along for one week, get out of her way, and most of all, go get her dog.


"I need Peanut, Sam, . . I can fight this disease if he is with me, "

And, so, two old friends, who are nearly no longer on speaking terms, make the long trek to retrieve an extralarge, diabetic Great Pyrenees from Katie's vengeful jerk of an exhusband.


That's the premise that lured me in, though the characters nearly lost me many, many times throughout the novel, Two grown women acting like sniping teenagers in the high school cafeteria Please! Then there's a lot of nonsense with a NewAgeytype pseudocelebrity, and a completely implausible instalove romance, and, well, my eyes were rolling so much it was hard to read.


I see many others loved this book, so I'm guessing it just wasn't for me,

And, I'm not about to blame it on the dog, .