finding love after your heart crumbles
Tatum Ward is a waitress in her small town of Trove Hills, Illinois. She has a side gig of writing difficult texts for others who want to break up or quit their job or something equally difficult. She doesn’t charge people for that. She just enjoys writing, and at this point in her life, that’s all the writing she can accomplish. She lives in a cottage by her parents’ house, close enough to hear if something were to go wrong. And she is still dealing with the fact that she and her siblings have a secret brother they never knew about.
Tatum’s father had admitted to an affair many years before, but he had just recently found out that it had resulted in a son, and now he wants the entire family to get together. Tatum is not ready for that. So when her favorite customer at the diner, June, gets dumped by a text that Tatum was asked to write, Tatum is devastated and apologized profusely. June is a fragrance designer who is about to travel to New York City for an important meeting about her perfumes, but she isn’t sure she can She was counting on her girlfriend for moral support. So Tatum pipes up and offers to go with her.
Eleanor Chapman is a press agent for Broadway shows, and when she finds out that her occasional hookup just proposed to his girlfriend after 4 years, she sent a company-wide email congratulating him, since he’s a producer that they represent. But then Eleanor follows that up with a message to his new fiancé telling her about their relationship. Suddenly, Eleanor finds herself without a job and wanting to get out of town to clear her head. She asks on social media if anyone can watch her cats at her apartment in New York for a week, and June responds. Tatum offers up her cottage to Eleanor, and she and June can use her apartment in New York City and take care of the cats.
When Eleanor comes to Trove Hills, she makes herself comfortable in Eleanor’s cottage. She is having a quiet evening with a bottle of wine and a book when she is interrupted by someone pounding on the door and asking Tatum to open up. When Eleanor doesn’t open the door, the person outside climbs in a window. And that’s how Eleanor met Carson, Tatum’s non-binary older sibling, covered in glitter. Carson apologizes for barging in, not realizing that Tatum had left town. But the attraction between Eleanor and Carson develops quickly.
During the next week, the attraction between Carson and Eleanor heats up, and Tatum and June’s time in New York is productive. Tatum makes friends with one of Eleanor’s neighbors and finds herself missing her family and feeling guilty for skipping out on the reunion the way she had. And when she gets word that her sister broke her leg, Tatum heads back home on the next flight, putting her burgeoning relationship with June on hold. Back in Illinois, Eleanor decides it’s also time to head home, leaving Carson without saying anything.
As everyone settles back into their lives, they all have to choose between going back to the unhappiness that caused them to make sudden life changes in the first place, or to run after the love they had found when they took chances.
Anywhere You Go is a sweet rom com about upending your life and finding everything you didn’t realize you were missing. I really enjoyed this house-swap story. I thought the characters were well-rounded and interesting, and I loved the two settings. The addition of Dawn in New York added lots of fun, and the story of a secret brother of Tatum and Carson added a lot of texture to the family. I had a great time with Anywhere You Go. It was an amazing trip.
Egalleys for Anywhere You Go were provided by Berkley through NetGalley, with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.
