Wanderlust

A debut romance I could hardly wait for this year was Wanderlust by Elle Everhart. When two virtual strangers win a trip around the world, they’re stuck in close quarters and butt heads a lot… before slowly developing deeper feelings. But one of them is keeping secrets that could prevent a romance from fully blooming between them.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Summary

Dylan Coughlan works at what she thought was her dream job, but the reality hasn’t lived up to her expectations. Needing a change of pace, she enters a radio contest on a whim… and wins! She gets to travel to nine destinations around the world in a six-week vacation. The catch? She has to travel with a random contact from her phone, who turns out to be a guy she kissed a club (then never called) months ago. Dylan and Jack couldn’t be more different, but despite their early bickering and constant disagreements, they start to form a tentative bond. But Dylan hasn’t told Jack about the rather embellished articles she’s been writing about him for her job. Is this career path worth the questionable ethics? How will Jack react once he knows the truth? Will their relationship be cut short before it’s even begun?

Review

What first caught my interest about Wanderlust is its glorious premise of winning a nine-destination vacation around the world. Um, where can I enter this radio contest? Because I could absolutely use an all-expenses-paid vacation and would love to see as much of the world as possible! I also love that we get to watch two near strangers, total opposites, be stuck in close quarters with each other for the better part of two months. Forced proximity is one of the best tropes in romance, and Wanderlust has that in spades. (Alas, there are no only-one-bed shenanigans here; the contest arrangers, sadly, did their jobs correctly on that front.) 

Right away, I loved this book. It’s a lot of fun and full of humor. One of my early favorite scenes is when Dylan is in the radio station and “Jack the Posho” is selected as her travel companion. So awkward! Even before the trip begins, Dylan and Jack are clearly very different and rub each other the wrong way. By the time they meet up at the airport and end up in Sydney, Australia, they’re arguing constantly. Now I must say, their early bickering is so immature and dumb, maybe especially on Dylan’s part. It seems like she’s constantly picking fights and getting annoyed for no good reason. Jack may seem vaguely grumpy, but Dylan is downright pugnacious. 

Luckily, these two opposites gradually get to know each other and even like one another. This is one of the most realistic romances I’ve read, in terms of the timeline to love. Jack and Dylan slowly inch forward to friendly acquaintances, then tentative friends, then friends with little romantic feelings. We spend nearly the whole long vacation waiting for them to really get together, with some stops and starts along the way for added tension. 

One big conflict between Dylan and Jack is related to her job. Dylan has been aiming for her own column at the magazine where she works for years, and her boss has finally given her an opportunity… with a condition: Dylan must write about her trip, angling it as a romantic getaway with a former one-night-stand, and if she has a big enough uptick in engagement, she can have her column. But Jack wants to remain private and doesn’t know what Dylan has been writing about him. There are some serious ethical lines being crossed here, and they’re starting to affect Dylan’s mental health. There’s also a theme of hateful comments and death threats that Dylan has gotten (related to an article she’d written the previous year). All of this eats at Dylan, but will eventually impact Jack, whenever and however he finds out. 

I like that career and ambitions play such a big role in Wanderlust, both for Dylan and for Jack. Both are at a crossroads, whether in their place of employment or in the kind of work they do. Both of them also have complicated family relationships, specifically with their parents. At what point do you try to fix the relationship, and at what point do you take some time apart? 

Some other themes that come into play surround Dylan: She’s proudly bisexual and also supports peoples’ right to have an abortion. She herself has had one. While her parents could tolerate one of those facets, they couldn’t accept the other. This has some ties to another book I read shortly before this, and I appreciated seeing more about this important subject. 

And of course, we have to talk about those far-flung destinations Dylan and Jack get to visit! They travel to Australia, Asia, Africa, Northern Europe, and North America. I loved the destinations where we got to spend extra time and take in the sights with our two protagonists. Of the places visited, Sydney, Bangkok, Cape Town, Reykjavík, and Mexico City were the most detailed. I would have liked even more descriptions of the local attractions, culture, food, and so on, but with so many stops on their itinerary, I can let that slide. 

Final Thoughts

Wanderlust will certainly give you wanderlust, as well as all the giddy feels once these two love birds finally find their way to each other. This book offers up travel hijinks, career struggles, family drama, and social issues, all wrapped up in a sweet and realistic love story. This is a wonderful debut, and I look forward to reading more from Elle Everhart. 

Get the Book

You can buy Wanderlust here – it’s available as a paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

Wanderlust by Elle Everhart
Audience	Adult
Genre	Contemporary Romance
Setting	England; Australia; ETC.
Number of Pages	368
Format I Read	ebook (NetGalley)
Original Publication Date	July 4, 2023

Official Summary

People We Meet on Vacation meets The Unhoneymooners in this sparkling debut romantic comedy about two near strangers—and complete opposites—who win a radio contest for a trip around the world.

Love’s about to take flight. 

Feeling stuck at work and tired of London’s dreary weather, magazine writer Dylan Coughlan impulsively rings a radio station one day only to win a once-in-a-lifetime trip around the world. The catch? Her travel partner must be a contact randomly selected on her phone. And of course this stressful game of contact roulette lands on a number listed only as Jack the Posho, an uptight, unbearably posh guy she met on a night out and accidentally ghosted.

The two couldn’t be more different, and as the trip kicks off, Jack seems like he’d sooner fling himself into the sun than have a conversation with Dylan. But more is hinging on this trip than the chance to see the world. For the past two years, Dylan’s been relegated to writing quizzes (and only quizzes) at her lifestyle magazine after an article about her past abortion went viral—and not in the good way. If she’s able to make a series about their trip successful, her overbearing boss will give her a chance at a permanent column. Dylan’s willing to do anything to make the series a hit, even if it means embellishing her and Jack’s relationship to satisfy readers. But as the column’s popularity grows, so does the bond between Dylan and Jack, and Dylan is forced to consider if the one thing she thought she always wanted is worth the price she’ll have to pay to get there.