Eva Reddy’s Trip Of A Lifetime – Fiona McKenzie Kekic

“How hard can it be to find a pair of Bollywood-dancing septuagenarians?” The main character is about to find out in Eva Reddy’s Trip Of A Lifetime, and my friends at Harlequin Australia were kind enough to send me a copy for review.

Now, I’ll admit that I’ve grown skeptical of the white-woman-finds-herself-travelling-to-‘exotic’-locales story, but this one had a twist that I couldn’t resist: older people behaving badly. Eva’s life is falling apart – she’s just turned fifty, she’s just been fired, and she’s just received a message from an anonymous friend revealing her husband’s infidelity – when she receives a phone call from a travel agent. Apparently, her aging parents have been kicked off their group tour of India, and they’ve gone missing somewhere in the bustling city of Delhi.

Eva promptly books herself on a flight and heads over to India to find them – only they don’t want to be found. And so begins her scavenger hunt across the subcontinent…

Eva Reddy’s Trip Of A Lifetime could have been a really fun, lighthearted read, except that I found the constant negative body talk to be a real bummer. Eva has a lot of internalised fatphobia and never misses a chance to mention how she’s “let herself go”, “needs to get to the gym”, “will never fit into size 8 jeans again” – plus, there’s her husband’s mistress’s “matchstick legs”. Of course, she only starts thinking positively about herself when she miraculously drops weight while running from region to region in pursuit of her parents and skipping meals in her rush.

That wasn’t the only predictable element of the story, either. Every plot point plays out exactly as expected, down to the miraculous overnight viral success of Eva’s blog, leading immediately to television appearances and book deals.

All that said, I know in my bones that Eva Reddy’s Trip Of A Lifetime will be a great pick for a different kind of reader – I highly recommend it to folks who love stories about travel mishaps and finding oneself in middle age.

Read Eva Reddy’s Trip Of A Lifetime on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)