Amanda Eyre Ward | THE JETSETTERS

Plot (via Goodreads):

When seventy-year-old Charlotte Perkins submits a sexy essay to the "Become a Jetsetter" contest, she dreams of reuniting her estranged children: Lee, an almost-famous actress; Cord, a handsome Manhattan venture capitalist who can't seem to find a bride; and Regan, a harried mother who took it all wrong when Charlotte bought her a Weight Watchers gift certificate for her birthday. Charlotte yearns for the years when her children were young and she was a single mother who meant everything to them. When she wins the cruise, the family packs all their baggage—literal and figurative—and spends ten days traveling from sun-drenched Athens through glorious Rome to tapas-laden Barcelona on an over-the-top cruise ship, the Splendido Marveloso. As lovers new and old join the adventure, long-buried secrets are revealed, and the Perkins family is forced to confront the defining choices in their lives. Can four lost adults find the peace they've been seeking by reconciling their childhood aches and coming back to each other?

Review:

The Jetsetters by Amanda Eyre Ward is a family drama meets Eat Pray Love in this lovely and immersive story of a woman and her three children who travel together and as the locations change, the drama increases tremendously. This is definitely a character-driven novel with some really vivid characters and amazing different settings. What I enjoyed reading this one was that with each place they traveled, new revelations were brought to light and each one was more intense than the last. I love a character-driven journey, but this one had four characters that I loved reading about and loved following on a trek to truly find themselves. Between current things in their lives and what they were like growing up, I found this to be a really intriguing read.

There was definitely some comedy and romance in this one to go along with the drama, which really broke things up so it had the perfect amount of lighter moments to make you laugh or focus on something other than the darker and heavy hitting issues. I loved Charlotte's story the most, but each one of her children had different things they were dealing with and Eyre Ward handled these social issues very well. Amanda Eyre Ward is a tremendously talented storyteller with an eye for setting and visuals, a way to build great characters, and the ability to tell a compelling story that will keep you invested and not wanting the story to end. I'm not sure what other stories she can dream up, but I am along for the next journey.

Special thanks to Amanda Eyre Ward for this copy in exchange for my honest review.

Rating: 4/5