His relationship with Rhodes is lovely, and the author also effectively transforms his behavior as he slowly warms up to Ora. From his shoulder-bump hugs to his terse, stumbly awkwardness when discussing anything serious, Amos is one of the most authentically written teens I’ve come across in a long, long time. As in liked me-liked me.” Maybe she should have had a friend pass him a note after PE?).įar and away, the best part of the novel is Ora’s and Rhodes’s relationships with Amos, Rhodes’s teenage son.

(This obliviousness to a male finding you attractive is also a YA staple, as is Ora’s juvenile phrasing when she talks to Rhodes: “I thought maybe you liked me. He even nicknames Aurora “angel”, which she writes off as him misremembering her name. Unfortunately, Zapata isn’t consistent with it, so this strong-silent type weirdly breaks into paragraph-long sentimental declarations of love. Rhodes is a cranky man of few words, and I liked that character. I just wanted her to be competent at anything. I am unaware of anybody who has centered their life for fifteen years around that level of performance in any field who sees it go and is like ‘Yeah, whatever, I don’t really care.’ Her cutesy klutziness, straight out of YA and Twilight, goes from contrived but inoffensive (she’s terrified of bats and mice, but Rhodes can rescue her) to eyebrow raising (she fell off a ladder and had a bat box fall on her face, but walked away with bruises?) to dangerously incompetent, as Ora takes on wilderness hikes beyond her skill level. How fortunate for the author, who doesn’t have to write lyrics, or worry about making an ambitious woman sympathetic! Also fortunately, Ora doesn’t feel the loss. She’s apparently a songwriter so good that she wrote over five award-winning albums, but her talent has dried up. She convinces Tobias Rhodes to let her stay, and begins a journey of recovery from her relationship and the unhealed loss of her mother twenty years earlier in a hiking accident. She rents a garage apartment online which turns out to have been posted by the owner’s teen son, Amos, without his knowledge. (“Breaking up” is probably a generous description – her husband, Kaden, is a serious mama’s boy who caved in to Mama’s insistence that they kick Ora to the curb). But with its clumsy heroine, rude but ultimately gold-hearted hero, and bland first person narrator, this book reads as run-of-the-mill YA, with only the swearing and sex scenes making it an adult novel.Īurora de la Torre returned to her hometown of Pagosa Springs, Colorado, after breaking up with her husband, a celebrated country singer whose career was based on Ora’s uncredited songwriting – and who also insisted on keeping Ora a secret.

Mariana Zapata is very well reviewed here, so I was excited to try her new book, All Rhodes Lead Here.

All Rhodes Lead Here by Mariana Zapata