Take Me Home by Melanie Sweeney

Road Trip Rules: No bad music. No detours. No falling in love.

Hazel Elliot never looks back. If a door closes, she burns the whole house down. But when she’s invited to her father’s Christmas Eve wedding, she’s forced to return to Lockett Prairie, Texas, for the first time since she fled for college.

Ash Campbell has been in love with Hazel since she dated his best friend in high school. Now, Ash and Hazel’s relationship is limited to playful feuding over the best chair in their favorite coffee shop, but his attraction to the prickly girl from home has only grown stronger.

When Ash’s car breaks down just as family obligations and the holidays pull him home, only one person can get him there on time. But Hazel has a condition: Everything between them must stay the same. And if it doesn’t? She gets the coffee shop. So the frenemies endure bad music, inclement weather, and B&Bs with only one bed—and that’s just the drive across Texas. When they finally arrive, Hazel must face that, in a small town, there’s nowhere to run . . . and maybe, for the first time, she’s found a reason to stay.

This, my friends, is a secret Christmas book! You would have no idea looking at the cover or reading the blurb, but at the heart of it all is two college students trying to get home to their families for Christmas. I love road trip books, so I was excited about that but when I started reading and realized it’s a Christmas book I was even more excited! Why was this not marketed as a Christmas read? And why was it given one of the ugliest covers I’ve seen in a long time? The green chair they’re both sitting in makes sense after reading the book (this chair is very important to the two of them), but I am not a fan of the dirty pink color and Ash’s shirt in a color that couldn’t clash more if it tried. Anyway, moving on!

Fair warning, if you’re not a fan of the miscommunication trope do not pick this one up. It’s raining cats and dogs and miscommunication all over the place in this book, between Ash and Hazel as well as between them and their respective families. The third act break-up is also pretty infuriating, and really showcases Hazel’s immaturity. I struggled with her for much of the book, but at this point I just wanted to shake her. She’s a very bad communicator, yet she’s a PhD candidate for psychology and she cannot see what she’s doing. Ash is wonderful and so sweet, and he deserves better. lol. He does fall first, which I love. I also liked the dual perspective. I really enjoyed getting into both characters’ heads so I could better understand them. There’s also a deeper thread of family struggles throughout, which was well done and easy to empathize with. The romance itself left a lot to be desired, but I did enjoy the Christmas road trip vibes and Ash’s cinnamon roll personality. Overall, this was a fun, but ultimately “just ok”,  debut.