Review by Gabrielle

Heartfelt and sparkling with care, Every Step She Takes is another great read from Alison Cochrun.

Favourite Quote:

Right now, the tattoo is distorted beneath the sticky bandage that protects it from my sweat, but even so, it demands my attention. I keep peeling back my sleeve to see if the tattoo is still there. It feels like proof I can change, proof that no part of me is set in stone. That I can keep discovering myself, keep creating myself, keep claiming myself.

The ink on my skin anchors me to my body in a way I’ve never experienced before.

Book Synopsis:

Thirty-five-year-old Seattleite Sadie Wells needs an escape. She’s desperate to escape her monotonous routines, the family business that has consumed her entire life, and the unexpected gay panic that has her questioning everything she thought she knew about herself. So when her injured sister offers Sadie her place on a tour along Portugal’s Camino de Santiago, she decides this is the perfect chance to get away from it all.

After three glasses of wine on the plane and some turbulence convince Sadie she won’t even survive the flight, she confesses all her secrets to her seatmate, Mal. The plane doesn’t crash, and it turns out Mal is on her Camino tour. Worst of all, Sadie learns that she is on a tour specifically for queer women, and that her two-hundred-mile trek will be a journey of self-discovery, whether she wants it to be or not.

Fascinated by the woman who drunkenly came out to her on the plane, Mal offers to help Sadie relive the queer adolescence she missed out on as they walk the Camino. As Sadie develops her newfound confidence, Mal grapples with a complicated loss and unexpected inheritance. But as their relationship blurs the lines between reality and practice, they both must decide if they will forever part at the end of the tour or chart a new course together.

Review:

I don’t think it’s a secret that I am a huge Alison Cochrun fan. Right from her debut, I have ravenously devoured each of her books. She is definitely an auto-buy author for me. I’ve been thinking about why that is, and I think it is just because she writes with such care. For her characters, for their stories, and for her readers, taking in one of her books feels like top-notch entertainment mixed with a really good therapy session.

In this book, we have two complicated characters, both at a crossroads in their lives. Sadie is a buttoned-up, responsible type. She practically raised her little sister and then took over her gran’s antique store at 21. She doesn’t have time to do much for herself, let alone think about what she might want for her life. Sure, she’s been on plenty of dates with men (mostly because her sister forced her into them), but there has never been a spark that led to more. In an out-of-character move, she spontaneously volunteers to take her sister’s place hiking the Camino de Santiago, through Portugal and into Spain. On the plane on the way there, major turbulence causes her to blurt out to her seatmate that she thinks she might be a lesbian. Not a problem since she’ll never see this person again. But of course, this is Romancelandia, and her seatmate Mal is also on her tour.

Mal, for her part, is going through some heavy stuff. Her father has recently passed away, and she has to deal with her complicated feelings about it. Mal is stuck in a behaviour pattern: book a flight to somewhere after something upsetting happens, fall in love with the first lady she finds. She’s trying to break the pattern, but Sadie practically falls in her lap. Determined to do better, she decides to become Sadie’s mentor and guide her through the queer adolescence she never had. She will NOT fall in love. Hijinks ensue.

I just loved these two together. It was so much fun watching them have these big feelings, but try to deny them both to themselves and to each other. The force is strong between them, but they are both quite stubborn about it. 

One of my favourite things about this book is watching Sadie’s journey as a “baby gay”. I love that Alison writes about characters who are still figuring things out about their sexuality, even a bit later in life. Sadie is 35 and just beginning to question; meanwhile, other members of their tour group are at different stages of discovery, even into their retirement years. Having the tour specifically catered to queer folks was wonderful and allowed Alison to include a diverse range of identities. I especially loved how the group became a found family, offering support to one another. 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the tour itself. Alison did a great job of including details and descriptions along the path, as well as what it was like for the characters to go through it. In her acknowledgments for the book, she discusses how she has walked the route herself, and her experience really brought the whole thing to life. I loved the descriptions of the scenery.

Every Step She Takes is a heartwarming read that will leave you cheering.

Thank you, Atria, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.