I have to tell you, I’ve been trying to finish this book for a year or two now! (I know, after my review on The View from Saturday you probably think I put books off all the time…) but the book was good. I had to sort of push myself to finally finish this particular one, though, because the problems the characters faced were so point blank. There wasn’t as much character development as I would have liked, and the main problems in the book, as I said before, were very out there; throughout the book I felt like the author didn’t even try to make the reading process in and of itself suspenseful – more of “this is the character’s problem and this is how they solve it.”

Each chapter was a character’s perspective – there’s Aggie, Kirby, Loretta, and Willow – and how they face their fears and meet one another at the Sleepy Time Motel. Aggie is putting on a brave face when she’s forced to sell the motel, Kirby is being defiant because he’s stuck at the motel with his mother while their car is being fixed; then he has to go to a military school, Loretta is happy to be visiting the Smoky Mountains where her birth mom visited at one point, along with her adopted parents, and Willow is trying to embrace the changes in her life – her mother leaving her, and her father up and selling their house to buy a stinky old motel.

While I did thoroughly enjoy the book, I felt it was too short and fast-paced. Albeit it is completely written for younger readers, the author still could have done a better job. I would have loved to have gotten to know Aggie, Kirby, Loretta, and Willow better, and may have finished this one a few years ago when I first picked it up had it been more page-turning.

This was, however, a heartwarming tale that made me smile; in the end all of the characters got what they wanted or aimed for, and that makes the reader happy. Still, the point in telling a story is telling the journey the main character takes to get where they want to be, and the telling of the journey wasn’t over-the-top, nor thrilling or very exciting to me. A good book, even though in my opinion, it could be great.

But who knows? It could be for you. Go and read the book for yourself 😉