The Road to Tender Hearts

This had such a fun premise but ended up being just okay for me. Everyone was making too many terrible decisions and it drove me nuts. I think PJ is supposed to be quirky in the fun kind of way, but he’s mostly just unlikeable and childish.

Usually I like books that deal with heavy themes with humor, but in this case the balance felt all wrong. The tone was persistently comedic throughout even as seriously traumatic events were casually occurring, like child abuse and neglect, murder, suicide, terminal illness, self-harm, alcoholism, and plenty of literal death. But then we also kept having these sweet, sentimental stories. Idk, maybe the story was still kind of fun, but the tonal shifts were insane.

Book author: Annie Hartnett