Crooked Road

Sixteen-year-old Charlotte has been estranged from Linda, her drug-addicted mother, since she was a small child. Thankfully, she was taken in and cared for by her Aunt Janice. However, her life is turned upside down when Linda drugs her, then kidnaps her and takes her across the country. It is during this trip that Charlotte realizes that life can deal a harsh hand to anyone and what she always believed about her mother might not be true. Is it too late to finally forge a relationship with the woman whose decisions have hurt her so often in the past?

This is an emotional story centering on a mother/daughter relationship, full of misunderstandings and missed opportunities. Linda’s desperation to have a relationship with her daughter is palpable, but the choices she’s facing make it nearly impossible. Yet it is her stubbornness and tenacity in wanting to introduce Charlotte to the birth father she has never met that will not let readers look away from the page. The road trip setting fits the story, as the journey between the two women is symbolic of the roads they are taking, and readers will want to see how it ends. Unfortunately, many point of view changes and extraneous details take away from the core of the story and slow down the pacing considerably. With main characters both sympathetic and relatable, "Crooked Road" is an engrossing read, with an ending that readers will think about long after the story ends.

 Kate Campbell