Boop and Eve's Road Trip: A Novel

by Mary Helen Sheriff

Overview

Eve Prince is done—with college, with her mom, with guys, and with her dream of fashion design. But when her best friend goes MIA, Eve must gather together the broken threads of her life in order to search for her.

When Eve’s grandmother, Boop, a retiree dripping with Southern charm, finds out about the trip, she—desperate to see her sister, and also hoping to alleviate Eve’s growing depression—hijacks her granddaughter’s road trip. Boop knows from experience that healing Eve will require more than flirting lessons and a Garlic Festival makeover. Nevertheless, Boop is frustrated when her feeble efforts yield the same failure that her sulfur-laced sip from the Fountain of Youth wrought on her age. She knows that sharing the secret that’s haunted her for sixty years might be the one thing that will lessen Eve’s growing depression—but she also fears that if she reveals it, she’ll lose her family and her own hard-won happiness.

Boop and Eve’s journey through the heart of Dixie is an unforgettable love story between a grandmother and her granddaughter.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631527630
Publisher:	She Writes Press
Publication date:	10/06/2020
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	670,531
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Mary Helen Sheriff spent fourteen years in classrooms teaching elementary school, middle school, college, and professionals. During that time, she also had the pleasure of dabbling in writing for children, teenagers, and adults in a variety of forms including fiction, poetry, blogs, and nonfiction. She spent several summers immersed in an MFA program in children’s literature at Hollins University. Currently, she lives and writes in Richmond, Virginia, with her two kids, two cats, and husband.

Editorial Reviews

2020 American Fiction Awards Winner in Coming of Age
2021 Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal Finalist
2021 Eric Hoffer Category Finalist
Buzzfeed's "12 Most Anticipated Books of Fall"
Popsugar's “The 21 Most Exciting New Releases Hitting Bookshelves Throughout October”
Parade's “Highly Anticipated Books of Fall”
Frolic's “Ten Books Perfect for Your Book Club”

“A touching intergenerational romp through the coastal South.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Book and Eve's Road Trip will touch your heart. A beautiful and emotional story of sisterhood, family, and friendship. From the first page, Mary Helen Sheriff’s lush and lyrical writing draws you in. Fans of Patti Callahan Henry and Kristy Woodson Harvey will adore this debut.”
—Kerry Lonsdale, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Last Summer

“Boop and Eve’s Road Trip is warm, witty, and wise, with characters I loved and characters I loved to hate. Filled with twists and turns and many a bump in the road, this trip is a delight from beginning to end.”
—Han Nolan, National Book Award–winning author of Dancing on the Edge

“Debut author Mary Helen Sheriff has woven a contemporary, heartwarming saga about women, for women. Peppered with surprises and humor, her story follows three generations of a dysfunctional family through their hurt, anger, and regret and toward reconciliation and hope.”
—Pam Webber, best-selling author of The Wiregrass and Moon Water

“Boop and Eve’s Road Trip is a delightful, funny, poignant ride filled with laughter, tears, and mystery. It is both a physical and emotional journey that Boop and Eve undertake, and the healing they both experience is something that might just heal a little part of everyone.”
—Kathy Hepinstall, author of The Book of Polly

“Three generations of women, one agonizing secret. Boop and Eve will steal your heart as they travel together—one seeking her future and the other forced to face her past. Sheriff’s novel will make you laugh and cry, sometimes on the very same page.”
—T. Greenwood, award-winning author of Keeping Lucy and Rust & Stardust

From the Publisher

2020-07-23
Fed up with college, a student embarks on a road trip to find her missing best friend with an unlikely co-pilot—her grandmother—in this debut novel.

Believing she’ll never make it as a fashion designer and reeling from the news that her lab partner crush has just started dating one of her friends, Eve Prince is flailing in college. She reaches out to her best friend and cousin, Ally, for support. But Ally’s response is cryptic, stating she is in “big trouble” and “gonna disappear for a while.” Eve is able to decipher Ally’s location from her letter and asks her grandmother Boop if she can borrow her car to go to the family beach house in Virginia. Eve is surprised when Boop agrees on one condition—that she accompany her. What follows is a heartwarming trek through the South as grandmother and granddaughter uncover secrets held for generations as well as confront family issues, all while having a little fun. The relationship between Boop and Eve is the most appealing part of Sheriff’s novel. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things going on in the plot, causing some confusion for readers. There is a distracting subplot that involves a character named Danielle Grusky, who takes over her husband’s private investigation firm after he is injured in a car accident. Hired by Boop’s sister, Victoria Liddel, Danielle follows Eve and her grandmother on their trip to discover Ally’s whereabouts. Characters tend to pop in and out of the narrative, like Zed, a good-looking cop who pulls Eve and Boop over and ends up inviting the young woman to surf with him. The central point of the story seems to be about mental illness and how it can affect generations, as Boop tells Eve: “This world we live in ain’t real sympathetic ’bout mental illnesses....Seems to me we’d all be a little less nuts if we spent our energy dealing with our crazy instead of hiding it.” With the help of her grandmother, who also has experienced depression, Eve uses the trip to pull herself out of the funk she grappled with in college. The book would have benefitted from the inclusion of a family tree for easy reference as well as a map of the two women’s route, as it’s difficult to keep track of their whereabouts along the way.

A touching intergenerational romp through the coastal South.

Kirkus Reviews