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guessits_densie's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug use, Alcohol, and Sexual content
abbyycadabbyy's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
lighthearted
medium-paced
3.0
I loved this book. I recommend it, I feel like there are probably better books with this concept.
I fell in love with all the characters that were introduced while Payton was in Canada. I shipped Beasey and Payton so hard. I had also never read a book with such harsh drug use and drug paraphernalia.
The book alternates between two different times. (Before) This takes place in the past, before Payton runs away to Canada. (Now) takes place in the present, the current time of the story. Originally, I didn't think I would be a fan of this writing style because I have never read anything that had changed from past to present. After staring the book, I started to love the Time changing. I felt it was put in all the right moments.
I normally have a hard time with unrealistic scenarios. (So, a book where a girl who lived in England runs away to Canada because she isn't happy with her friends. Then while she in Canada her parents were like "it's okay just come back when you're ready" Then she makes friends with these super cool people and learns how to have real, good friends.) Didn't seem like a book I would enjoy but it definitely surprised me, because it was so much more than that. There was so much more that went into it.
I fell in love with all the characters that were introduced while Payton was in Canada. I shipped Beasey and Payton so hard. I had also never read a book with such harsh drug use and drug paraphernalia.
The book alternates between two different times. (Before) This takes place in the past, before Payton runs away to Canada. (Now) takes place in the present, the current time of the story. Originally, I didn't think I would be a fan of this writing style because I have never read anything that had changed from past to present. After staring the book, I started to love the Time changing. I felt it was put in all the right moments.
I normally have a hard time with unrealistic scenarios. (So, a book where a girl who lived in England runs away to Canada because she isn't happy with her friends. Then while she in Canada her parents were like "it's okay just come back when you're ready" Then she makes friends with these super cool people and learns how to have real, good friends.) Didn't seem like a book I would enjoy but it definitely surprised me, because it was so much more than that. There was so much more that went into it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug use and Toxic friendship
Minor: Sexual content
nickoliver's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I’ve had this book borrowed from the library for a while, so it was really exciting to me that I finally picked it up! Especially considering I had the German translation, which on top of that had almost 400 pages.
I didn't know what to expect going into this book, because I'd never heard of it before. It was some random book I'd found at the library when I was in one of my rare "What if I tried reading books in German again?" phases, though I did know the author beforehand. And while there were certain things I didn't like, overall, it was a pleasant surprise!
The story had two timelines. In timeline one, the present, Peyton had very spontaneously decided to temporarily leave her life in England and fly to Canada. She’d dropped out of school, stole her dad’s credit card, and wanted to leave the uncertainty and sadness of her life behind. While in Canada, she met new people, ones that taught her what real friendship (and also romance) looked like.
In timeline two, the past, Peyton explained what exactly had happened to make her take that drastic step of literally fleeing halfway across the globe.
What surprised me the most was how little I disliked this way of storytelling. Usually, I don’t like it when books are split into present and past, because I always end up not caring much about the chapters set in the past and find myself wanting to skim-read. That desire was missing here. While it was very easy to figure out what exactly happened from a certain point on even before it was truly revealed, I still didn’t find the past chapters pointless. They added a depth to it that I think wouldn’t have been there quite as much if there’d only been a focus on the present, and made me a lot more understanding towards Peyton’s actions and decisions.
Peyton as a character wasn’t technically someone I cared about deeply, but I do think that our shared experiences as lonely, friendless teenagers resulted in me not being bothered by her actions as much as other people might be. Don’t get me wrong - she did a lot of things that made me roll my eyes, like fleeing to Canada in October without so much as a coat and then being surprised by it. She was also naive to a degree that should’ve been impossible with her past experience. But she was also incredibly, painfully relatable.
The discussions Barnard created about friendship and about how far people would go to have them, even if they had to completely lose themselves in the process, was my absolute favourite thing about this book. Basically, Peyton had gotten bullied relentlessly for years at her old school, so when she started over at a new one, she was determined to not be alone anymore and to find connections with her peers. She ended up befriending a group of people that wasn’t good for her and that she barely even liked half of the time - but she was so terrified of being alone and being a victim again that she ignored all the red flags and did things she wasn’t proud of.
The contemplation that Peyton had about friendships made me very emotional. I’ve never had friends, especially not ones that I’d trust and that I was close with, so the desperation and loneliness she felt hit me deep in my core. To be honest, it almost made me depressed, because it made me yearn for it so hard I wanted to cry . If I’d read this as a teen, I probably would’ve felt hopeful and maybe bittersweet about the future; but as an adult in their late twenties, that was impossible.
Regardless of those sad feelings it conjured up in me, I loved the way Barnard talked about Peyton’s desire to have friends - even if those friends weren’t good for her. That’s what I meant when I said that my experience with loneliness and lack of friends made me understand her better - because despite the fact that as an adult, it is very easy to say that she acted stupid and should’ve known better and questioned her friends more, I just know in my heart that I would’ve done the exact same thing as her if I’d been in her situation as a teenager. I would’ve immediately given my true self up if it meant I could have friends to hang out with.
Plot-wise, I do think that logic was thrown out the window at times. Realistically, Peyton probably wouldn’t have even been allowed to enter Canada, or get a room in a youth hostel without a parent. Admittedly, I wasn’t quite all too aware of that and have only learnt about it from other reviews - I’ve only gone to another country alone once in my life when I was underage, and nobody there even asked what my intentions were -, but now I can’t unsee it and it bothers me.
On top of that, Barnard barely acknowledged how much worse it could’ve gone for Peyton. A 17-year-old teenager, going to another country without so much as a plan, could’ve easily fallen into the wrong hands. That’s what I meant when I said Peyton was naive - she became friends with pretty much the first people she met in the hotel and didn’t even question their intentions. I know that the atmosphere in youth hostels is rather laid-back and friendships are forged more easily, but I would’ve appreciated an acknowledgement of the potential danger. Without that, a teenager might pick up this book and think this is the greatest idea ever, without thinking about the negatives.
To be honest, I feel like this book offers very differing reading experience depending on where in your life you are. As a teenager, it’s inspiring and might awaken wanderlust. As an adult, you are way more reserved - I actually found myself on Peyton’s mum’s side at times, which was a very odd feeling to be having.
The story was also a bit rushed. You didn’t really get to experience the road trip too much and see the characters become close to each other. Before you could even blink, everyone was friends and two weeks had passed. At most, Peyton would talk about the places they’d seen, but it was always a bit on the outside; you were told about their adventures more than you were shown them. It definitely could’ve benefited from slowing down and taking the time to actually have the reader join the trip.
That too-fast pace also made the side characters a bit underdeveloped, which was something about the novel I didn’t like. Peyton met six people in Canada that she went on a road trip with, and some of them were barely explored at all. Especially these two guys named Lars and Stefan felt more like they were just thrown in there to have more people; I didn’t even realise that they were a couple until I was quite some way into the story, and I am usually quite attuned to queerness. So when Peyton talked about how close she was to the others and how much these friendships meant to her, it didn’t feel authentic to me.
Personally, I also don’t think there should’ve been a romance, because it undermined the message of the book a bit. Because at the end of the story, Peyton was closest to her love interest Beasey, and she took it way harder to be leaving him behind than any of the other five, and that made it seem like friendship is way less important than romantic love. The impact of the story would’ve been much bigger if everything had stayed platonic.
It didn’t help that Beasey wasn’t an exception to the rule of underdevelopment. I never really understood why he and Peyton even fell in love with each other. At first, he didn’t even register as a potential love interest - partly because I didn’t go into this book expecting a romance, and partly because I thought for a while that he and Khalil , his best friend, were a couple (which made the fact that I didn’t recognise the actual queer couple kind of hilarious). Even later, when Peyton talked about how he was her best friend, insinuating that she was much closer to him than any of the others, I didn’t understand where that came from. Because while he might have been mentioned more often than the others, I didn’t see the deeper friendship/budding romance that he had with Peyton.
It didn’t help that I never learnt how much older than Peyton he was, which made me also too uncomfortable and nervous to enjoy the romance to begin with. It was mentioned a lot that Peyton was the youngest at seventeen and that the oldest were about 25 years old, but I didn’t know where in that age range Beasey fell. It was impossible for me to even consider rooting for the romance as long as that uncertainty prevailed.
Overall, I really liked the discussions around friendship in this book, that was definitely a highlight for me. It was also engaging and at parts hopeful and inspiring (if you didn’t look at it through a too realistic lens). However, the characters were a bit too underdeveloped and the plot could’ve done well with slowing down a little. And the romance really wasn’t necessary and undermined the message of the story in my opinion.
I didn't know what to expect going into this book, because I'd never heard of it before. It was some random book I'd found at the library when I was in one of my rare "What if I tried reading books in German again?" phases, though I did know the author beforehand. And while there were certain things I didn't like, overall, it was a pleasant surprise!
The story had two timelines. In timeline one, the present, Peyton had very spontaneously decided to temporarily leave her life in England and fly to Canada. She’d dropped out of school, stole her dad’s credit card, and wanted to leave the uncertainty and sadness of her life behind. While in Canada, she met new people, ones that taught her what real friendship (and also romance) looked like.
In timeline two, the past, Peyton explained what exactly had happened to make her take that drastic step of literally fleeing halfway across the globe.
What surprised me the most was how little I disliked this way of storytelling. Usually, I don’t like it when books are split into present and past, because I always end up not caring much about the chapters set in the past and find myself wanting to skim-read. That desire was missing here. While it was very easy to figure out what exactly happened from a certain point on even before it was truly revealed, I still didn’t find the past chapters pointless. They added a depth to it that I think wouldn’t have been there quite as much if there’d only been a focus on the present, and made me a lot more understanding towards Peyton’s actions and decisions.
Peyton as a character wasn’t technically someone I cared about deeply, but I do think that our shared experiences as lonely, friendless teenagers resulted in me not being bothered by her actions as much as other people might be. Don’t get me wrong - she did a lot of things that made me roll my eyes, like fleeing to Canada in October without so much as a coat and then being surprised by it. She was also naive to a degree that should’ve been impossible with her past experience. But she was also incredibly, painfully relatable.
The discussions Barnard created about friendship and about how far people would go to have them, even if they had to completely lose themselves in the process, was my absolute favourite thing about this book. Basically, Peyton had gotten bullied relentlessly for years at her old school, so when she started over at a new one, she was determined to not be alone anymore and to find connections with her peers. She ended up befriending a group of people that wasn’t good for her and that she barely even liked half of the time - but she was so terrified of being alone and being a victim again that she ignored all the red flags and did things she wasn’t proud of.
The contemplation that Peyton had about friendships made me very emotional. I’ve never had friends, especially not ones that I’d trust and that I was close with, so the desperation and loneliness she felt hit me deep in my core. To be honest, it almost made me depressed, because it made me yearn for it so hard I wanted to cry . If I’d read this as a teen, I probably would’ve felt hopeful and maybe bittersweet about the future; but as an adult in their late twenties, that was impossible.
Regardless of those sad feelings it conjured up in me, I loved the way Barnard talked about Peyton’s desire to have friends - even if those friends weren’t good for her. That’s what I meant when I said that my experience with loneliness and lack of friends made me understand her better - because despite the fact that as an adult, it is very easy to say that she acted stupid and should’ve known better and questioned her friends more, I just know in my heart that I would’ve done the exact same thing as her if I’d been in her situation as a teenager. I would’ve immediately given my true self up if it meant I could have friends to hang out with.
Plot-wise, I do think that logic was thrown out the window at times. Realistically, Peyton probably wouldn’t have even been allowed to enter Canada, or get a room in a youth hostel without a parent. Admittedly, I wasn’t quite all too aware of that and have only learnt about it from other reviews - I’ve only gone to another country alone once in my life when I was underage, and nobody there even asked what my intentions were -, but now I can’t unsee it and it bothers me.
On top of that, Barnard barely acknowledged how much worse it could’ve gone for Peyton. A 17-year-old teenager, going to another country without so much as a plan, could’ve easily fallen into the wrong hands. That’s what I meant when I said Peyton was naive - she became friends with pretty much the first people she met in the hotel and didn’t even question their intentions. I know that the atmosphere in youth hostels is rather laid-back and friendships are forged more easily, but I would’ve appreciated an acknowledgement of the potential danger. Without that, a teenager might pick up this book and think this is the greatest idea ever, without thinking about the negatives.
To be honest, I feel like this book offers very differing reading experience depending on where in your life you are. As a teenager, it’s inspiring and might awaken wanderlust. As an adult, you are way more reserved - I actually found myself on Peyton’s mum’s side at times, which was a very odd feeling to be having.
The story was also a bit rushed. You didn’t really get to experience the road trip too much and see the characters become close to each other. Before you could even blink, everyone was friends and two weeks had passed. At most, Peyton would talk about the places they’d seen, but it was always a bit on the outside; you were told about their adventures more than you were shown them. It definitely could’ve benefited from slowing down and taking the time to actually have the reader join the trip.
That too-fast pace also made the side characters a bit underdeveloped, which was something about the novel I didn’t like. Peyton met six people in Canada that she went on a road trip with, and some of them were barely explored at all. Especially these two guys named Lars and Stefan felt more like they were just thrown in there to have more people; I didn’t even realise that they were a couple until I was quite some way into the story, and I am usually quite attuned to queerness. So when Peyton talked about how close she was to the others and how much these friendships meant to her, it didn’t feel authentic to me.
Personally, I also don’t think there should’ve been a romance, because it undermined the message of the book a bit. Because at the end of the story, Peyton was closest to her love interest Beasey, and she took it way harder to be leaving him behind than any of the other five, and that made it seem like friendship is way less important than romantic love. The impact of the story would’ve been much bigger if everything had stayed platonic.
It didn’t help that Beasey wasn’t an exception to the rule of underdevelopment. I never really understood why he and Peyton even fell in love with each other. At first, he didn’t even register as a potential love interest - partly because I didn’t go into this book expecting a romance, and partly because I thought for a while that he and Khalil , his best friend, were a couple (which made the fact that I didn’t recognise the actual queer couple kind of hilarious). Even later, when Peyton talked about how he was her best friend, insinuating that she was much closer to him than any of the others, I didn’t understand where that came from. Because while he might have been mentioned more often than the others, I didn’t see the deeper friendship/budding romance that he had with Peyton.
It didn’t help that I never learnt how much older than Peyton he was, which made me also too uncomfortable and nervous to enjoy the romance to begin with. It was mentioned a lot that Peyton was the youngest at seventeen and that the oldest were about 25 years old, but I didn’t know where in that age range Beasey fell. It was impossible for me to even consider rooting for the romance as long as that uncertainty prevailed.
Overall, I really liked the discussions around friendship in this book, that was definitely a highlight for me. It was also engaging and at parts hopeful and inspiring (if you didn’t look at it through a too realistic lens). However, the characters were a bit too underdeveloped and the plot could’ve done well with slowing down a little. And the romance really wasn’t necessary and undermined the message of the story in my opinion.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug use, Alcohol, Bullying, Toxic relationship, and Toxic friendship
Moderate: Domestic abuse and Toxic relationship
Minor: Death, Sexual content, and Car accident
Also CW for drug overdosephoenixfaie's review
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Moderate: Toxic friendship, Drug use, Toxic relationship, Bullying, and Alcoholism
Minor: Sexual content, Physical abuse, Injury/Injury detail, and Violence
mila_7's review
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying
Moderate: Sexual content
Minor: Homophobia
mullemit's review against another edition
4.0
I’m used to being really impressed by Sara Barnard’s work, and I definitely walked away with something and I did enjoy Destination Anywhere, but it felt a little shallow compared to some of her other books.
I think it’s mostly a question of personal taste, I like her more intimate, less plot-oriented books better, and I feel like even though there was plenty for me to identify with in Peyton that the premise™️ sort of got in the way of really connecting with her.
I think it’s mostly a question of personal taste, I like her more intimate, less plot-oriented books better, and I feel like even though there was plenty for me to identify with in Peyton that the premise™️ sort of got in the way of really connecting with her.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug use
Moderate: Sexual content
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