Ava White has it all: a great job, two successful kids in college, a loving father. Change is highly overrated and for other, more adventurous, people. But then her father disappears. Poof. He wandered off, meandering around like Marco Polo to goodness only knows where. And for some reason, a Texas liberation organization seems to be all too curious about his whereabouts. Ava flies across the … world on a hunch and is stuck having to rely on a handsome, if grouchy, tour-guide and a motley group of travel companions to guide her to her father’s birthplace. Dodging tazer-happy liberationists, her beloved daughter, and goats, she races across the wilds of Northern Spain, hoping to find her father before it’s too late.
For fans of women’s fiction, romance, romantic comedy, humor and travel writing.
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Ava White doesn’t mean to be a hot mess. She wants to have it all together and just live a normal existence with a normal family whose members don’t randomly disappear. But she can’t. Because her father walked out of his assisted living facility and no one has the fairest clue where he went….until her daughter Emma mentions a city in the sky.
Four days later, Ava is in Leon, Spain. Armed with little more than some family history to guide her on the search for her ailing father, she’s off to a rocky start. She has so many unanswered questions and only a faint idea of where to find someone who doesn’t want to be found. At least “Tom Brady’s swarthier twin” will be there to lend a hand.
I’d like to open this review portion with a quote from chapter one… “My name is Ava White, and I have now ridden in an elevator with a reigning Polka champion and fifteen vibrators while listening to muzac. “
Now that you have a firm understanding of the tone of Wanderlust, I can switch to the rest. Ava isn’t a sprightly twenty-two year old, but a middle age woman with grown children and a career. She knows who she is and that’s a refreshing change from most books that come across my Kindle. She’s an adult who doesn’t need a man to solve her problems, but knows what to do with one when he’s tall, dark, handsome, and has a killer accent.
Overall, I found this book to be completely delightful. Funny and relatable, I enjoyed following Ava on the journey to find her father. There was some heart and romance between the laughs, making it a well rounded piece.
Ava White is a anxiety-ridden single mother living in Humble, Texas, who’s barely coping with the fact that her father, Raul, who has lived a few houses down since her children were small, has moved to an assisted living facility. So when he vanishes, without his medicine and no word of his destination, Ava frantically divines from his collection of books and lifelong obsession with archeology that he must be on a pilgrimage to his Spanish hometown, San Judas de Tadeo, which was devastated by an earthquake several years earlier. The only way to get there is a train that climbs the mountain once a week, or join a hiking expedition that will get there in a matter of days. Guess which one Ava chooses.
While she painfully climbs and fights her attraction to Borja, the handsome tour guide, a loud-mouthed bully in the assisted living facility, Mr. Thompson, accuses her departed father of being a terrorist and reports him to a shady anti-government group, the Texas Star. They, too, go in search of Ava’s father, convinced he’s on his way a treasure stash that should be turned over to them “for the greater good of Texas.” Their involvement alerts the FBI, and suddenly a lot of Americans are scouring the Spanish mountains in search of Ava and Raul.
Along the way, Ava is joined by her daughter, Emma; her long-lost mother, Sunshine; Texas FBI agent Geoff Johnson, who’s devoted to Emma; the attentive Borja, who clearly prefers Ava to the big-haired, tightly-attired man hunters on the hike; and threatened by the menacing Paul Hagen, a Texas Star thug who tases her and a singing goat (who only bears love and good will in his tiny goat heart), as well as dragging her through waterless stretches of the mountains, in his efforts to uncover the mythical bounty. The sudden return of her mother, who was banished for endangering her daughter’s young life, amps up Ava’s ever-present panic, but she pushes on in search of Raul, determined to find her beloved, unfailing father before, in her fearful mind, he dies alone in the dust of San Judas de Tadeo.
Ava relates her journey in anxiety-riddled frenzy tinged with wry humor, and it doesn’t take long to understand that the staccato narration represents her jittery view of life — always throwing her a wicked curve ball to catch without a mitt. She’s spent her life devoted to her father and raising her children — her husband bailed early in the marriage — and Raul’s disappearance is her mental breaking point. Following her emotional and physical journey can be exhausting, but it also lays bare just what gives Miss Charity Ava White the strength and humor to persist despite her paralyzing fear, and her story is a satisfying conquest of personal demons and the joy of finally living for herself.
Finding a New Life by Surprise
This is a wonderful bit of women’s fiction. As the story unfolded and characters were introduced, I almost gave up on this dysfunctional woman. But then, it got very interesting very quickly. This is a fun story that ends in the most unexpected manner. The author weaves quite a believable tale! I hope to read more of her work. I received this ARC book for free from Booksprouts and this is my honest review.