You'd think a 350 page long book about a single boat race would be monotonous or atleast get boring in the middle right ?
Not this one !
This book was an absolute pleasure to read. I was invested in Sadie and Cully and the Odyssey right from the start. The chemistry between Sadie and Cully was palpable from the start.
It captured the complexities of a father daughter relationship without delving too much into them ( still don't like her dad or Tanner though )
Goulash and the fuzzy dolls had my heart !! ( )

I'm extremely satisfied. Take a girl smarting from her dad's sudden coldness after their crash during a 265 mile canoe race. He expected her to suck it up even though she needed stitches in her head and had two cracked ribs after slamming into a rock in the darkness. It's a year later and Sadie is bound and determined this time she's going to finish the race. When her older brother switches teams the morning of the race, she's left with a Hobson's Choice-not race, or pair up with John Cullen, her former best friend and current enemy.
What follows is multi-threaded, there's the actual 265 three day grind on the river, complete with alligators. treacherous currents, poisonous snakes, tricky portages, and snags across the river, all even more treacherous at night. There's the emotional journey that starts as hostility, but evolves into Sadie and Cully realizing, not at the same speed, how much of their perception of what took place isn't accurate, and there's the drive to keep going through storms, exhaustion, hallucinations and physical ailments. It's a great blend of adventure, budding romance, and coming of age, and a book that should be added to many libraries. ( )