The Car Share

Move over Fern and Wally … Eleanor and Raymond .... Weylyn and Mary … Nina and Tom.  Don’t be jealous - I still love you all, but there’s a new delightful duo rocking my world:  

Alex and Maxine.  

Now hold on, don’t get the wrong idea.  These two aren’t a couple - that would be icky:  Alex is a down-in-the-dumps 25-year-old young man and Maxine is an energetic, whipsmart 90-year-old woman with the best purse of goodies ever who meet through an app called CarShare.com to rideshare on a trip to Brussels, but in every way that’s important, they stole my heart and put a smile on my face as I watched them bond in friendship over their two days of adventure.

I don’t want to rehash the whole plot since SO many of us have reviewed this book, but the short story is that Alex is deeply depressed and using his trip to Brussels to heal a broken heart and Maxine is a retirement home runaway convinced she has Alzheimer’s and traveling to Brussels to end her life on her own terms.  What neither of this unlikely pair expect is how quickly and deeply they’ll come to value each other, and how their newfound friendship will impact their futures.

The madcap, crazy situations and adventures these two find themselves in over two days - and they are doozies - are in turns hilariously comical and sweetly melancholy, with an equal measure of laugh-out-loud moments and moments where I felt genuine tenderness and concern for them.  They’re both hurting in their own ways from past and present circumstances, but as they bicker and bond through good times and bad, I felt so invested in how things would play out for both of them.  I wasn’t ready for their story to end!  

Here’s the good news:  There’s a bonus chapter you can email author Zoe Brisby for!  I just read it and it was PERFECT.  I’m not sure if that chapter will be included when the book is published, but those of you who get the ARC should definitely request it.

If you want a story that warms your heart and proves that age is just a number and family is who you choose, this is just the gem of a book you need!

★★★★★ ❤️

Thanks to NetGalley, Hodder & Stoughton, Hodder Paperbacks, and author Zoe Brisby for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.  This will be published June 3, 2021