Chloe has spent her life trying to be invisible, to just blend into the crowd and not make any lasting connections with anyone.  She thinks her life is already mapped out for her, that she knows how it will all turn out.  She wants to graduate from high school, jump in her car, and hit the road – and never look back.

Blake’s life appears to be perfect.  He is popular, he’s a star player on the basketball team, and he has a beautiful girlfriend.  Sounds like every teenage boy’s dream, right?  But Blake’s life isn’t perfect. His parents are still married, but live separate lives.  His mother is an alcoholic and lives in the guest house. His father is a Colonel in the army who has high expectations for Blake.  He wants Blake to join the army and do something important with his life, just like all of the other male members of his family before him have done.  He doesn’t want Blake to waste his life dribbling a ball and dunking it in a net.  Blake has big decisions to make regarding his future – does he do what will make him happy and play college ball, or does he make his father happy and join the army?

Chloe and Blake bump into each other (literally) one night when she is trying to get away from a violent situation.  Blake ends up saving her from her assailant and they spend the next few hours together.  He feels an intense attraction and connection to her immediately.  I liked Blake from the get-go, but I felt as though the intensity of his feelings for Chloe happened a little too quickly.

Chloe liked Blake too, but she was hell bent on keeping her distance from him.  She didn’t want to feel anything for him, but even more so, she didn’t want him to feel anything for her.  There were plenty of instances in the book where I wanted to smack Chloe for pushing this great guy away, but then there were times when I felt so incredibly sorry for her situation that I could almost understand why she was doing the pushing.  She told him from the beginning that she was leaving after graduation, that she wasn’t prepared to start anything with him.  He just wanted her, and he was willing to take whatever she could offer in order to spend as much time as possible with her.

I wanted to fall in love with this book, I really did, but I ended up having mixed feelings about it.  It wasn’t until I was about 37% into it that the story started to pick up for me.  I enjoy a book that is written from the male and female perspectives, but I found that it jumped around a bit too much.  Where the Road Takes Me is certainly not just a light coming of age book.  It deals with some serious subject matter that had me wiping a tear or two from my eyes.  Overall, it was a sweet romance that delivered a good message.  I especially liked the red letter days, the messages that they wrote on the magnets, and yes, I liked Josh (he didn’t have a big role in the book, but he was always good for a giggle or two).

*3.5 Stars*

 

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