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From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

The last place that Sam wants to spend her summer is with her mom and Gram at Sunny Sandy Shores, her grandmother’s retirement community in south Florida. Nor does she like the thought of being a guinea pig for her mother’s latest idea, the Dear Me Journal. Once they arrive at the airport, Sam and her mom realize that Gram has a new style, a new convertible, and no intention of spending lazy days by the pool. Gram and her best friend, Mimi, have concocted a plan to take Sam and Brandy, Mimi’s grandson, on a road trip in order to audition and qualify for the Seniors Got Talent karaoke contest. As in all the best road trip stories, things do not go according to plan. Told through a series of letters Sam writes to herself, the reader is taken along on a madcap series of misadventures with Florida’s scenic rural highways as a backdrop. Young readers excitedly anticipating carefree summer fun, or road trips of their own, will enjoy When I Hit the Road.

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Rising seventh grader Sam is embarking on a road trip to beat all others. Pressured into visiting her recently widowed grandmother, Sam discovers that she will be accompanying the feisty elderly lady and two other companions—Gram’s similarly exuberant and aged pickleball partner, Mimi, and Mimi’s hunky eighth grade grandson, Brandon—on a very quirky tour of places no one would ever want to visit in Florida. Stops include an alligator-infested road where their car breaks down, an empty church where they spend an uncomfortable night, a flooded, run-down cabin in a deluge, and a filthy, not-barbecue joint. Many of the stops are interrupted by anxious calls from Sam’s controlling, stressed-out, workaholic mom, who’s trying to rein in the previously staid, seemingly gone-wild Gram. But it’s a voyage of discovery for Sam, who finds she’s not really the inept person she viewed herself as. Sam documents all the bizarre misadventures in letters she’s writing (at her mother’s determined urging) to her future self, revealing both her doubts about her capabilities and her growing understanding of how universal self-doubt is. Despite these insights, the story is mostly fluff and fun: a wild, lighthearted exploration of a summer trip to remember. The small cast of seemingly white characters verge on caricatures, contributing to the overall goofiness of the story. A perfect beach read: summery and silly. (Fiction. 9-12) Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.