Trish Doller - Off the Map

Carla Black’s life motto is “here for a good time, not for a long time.” She’s been traveling the world on her own in her vintage Jeep Wrangler for nearly a decade, stopping only long enough to replenish her adventure fund. She doesn’t do love and she doesn’t ever go home.
Eamon Sullivan is a modern-day cartographer who creates digital maps. His work helps people find their way, but he’s the one who’s lost his sense of direction. He’s unhappy at work, recently dumped, and his one big dream is stalled out—literally.
Fate throws them together when Carla arrives in Dublin for her best friend’s wedding and Eamon is tasked with picking her up from the airport. But what should be a simple drive across Ireland quickly becomes complicated with chemistry-filled detours, unexpected feelings, and a chance at love - if only they choose it.

Comment: In 2022 and 2023 I've read the first and second books in this Beck sisters trilogy. Those two books had a Beck sister as protagonist and since I liked both (what a coincidence both were entries I chose for the TBR challenge), I've decided to read this third one. 

The protagonist is a friend of Anna (book #1) and now that I've read it, my conclusion is that is isn't necessary or, perhaps, the author should have written it with a different goal in mind.

In this story we meet Carla Black, an adventurous woman who loves to travel, something she started enjoying since a child, when she went with her father to many places. Recently, her father started to show signs of dementia and has asked her to keep traveling so that she doesn't need to see his deterioration. Although she is in constant contact with her stepmother, her father's carer now, she still feels she might too far, something she only really realizes when she's in Ireland, for her friend Anna's wedding. Still, she promised and her friend asked Eamon, one of her future brothers-in-law, to give Carla a ride to the wedding location and Eamon and Carla hit if off right away. But it seems they are in different places in their lives now, could this be wrong time, wrong place for them?

From the beginning - and this isn't a very big novel - I was not "feeling it". The musings and feelings of readers can be tricky to describe but I bet any other reader recognizes this notion anyway, and this story just didn't grab me like the other two did when I read them. In part I think it might be because this isn't exactly in the same lines as the others but my initial impression was also not very positive because, unlike the other novels, Carla and Eamon don't seem to need time to develop a connection between them.

This quick decision doesn't have to be a problem, but I was not keen on seeing they decided to sleep together only a few hours after seeing each other for the first time. I know it can happen but it made me see them as impulsive characters I don't have much in common with. It also seemed they wanted to treat this situation as something casual and temporary until Carla leaves, but at the same time we obviously know the idea is for them to realize they could have future if they wanted and if they could compromise on the things they think are locking them to a place.

I wasn't too fond of the method used to deal with the geographical issue between them. Eamon is in Ireland and Carla will go back home to spend as much time as possible with her father. This situation isn't conductive to a larger than life romance but that is precisely what their "connection" seems to indicate anyway. I think this whole situation would not feel as superficial as it did, to me, if the story had more pages for some things to be developed better or if the focus was not on Carla being there for Anna, but on Carla alone and her father's situation (with, perhaps, with a romance with someone else too).

The way things were, Carla seemed to be someone who cannot be stuck in one place, meaning her decisions to stay anywhere would always feel second choice. Eamon isn't developed much beyond the basic but, of course, I got the feeling he was there as a prop for Carla, a means for her to weight in what was happening and not as an actual love interest that had to exist for her to consider anything. Since they were intimate so soon I had the exact opposite reaction and saw their relationship as not deep enough. Also, despite the vocabulary used to express how in sync they were, I saw them as individuals who were brought together on purpose and not as individuals who had to be together because they made sense in this specific scenario.

Perhaps this story could be a novella instead, without romance? I keep thinking about different ways this story could be told and that could be easier to appreciate. I think I also got the author's intention, the whole opposition of what one thinks they want vs real life placing challenges ahead and so on, but unlike what happened in other similar books, this one didn't seem to convince me the journey was worth the end. This is a romance, so anyone can imagine that a HEA does happen.

Before that happens, Carla has to deal with her father's illness. I won't spoiler things but let it be said there were other paths I thought the author would use instead of the one that was picked. This part was the one I felt the emotions presented were the most authentic and I would really have preferred the story to be more about this situation than about Carla "finding herself". Still, the story is what it is and I think I will not think of this book with warm feelings... thankfully it wasn't a big story because it really didn't contribute as much to the Beck sisters "universe" as I hoped.

Grade: 4/10