Every Step She Takes

 Every Step She Takes by Alison Cochrun, 384 pages.

Sadie Wells doesn't have time for much of anything, but especially not for dating. And after a long list of dates with men with zero sparks (best not to think about why she's 35 and has maybe never been attracted to a man), she's desperate to get away from her life, and spontaneously agrees to take her influencer sister's place on a tour of the Camino de Santiago. When she is convinced the plane is going down she confesses all of her secrets to her seatmate, only to discover (to her horror) that said seatmate is named Mal, and is also on her tour. And also it's a tour specifically for queer women. Sadie has 100s of kilometers of self-discovery before her, whether she feels ready or not.

Alison Cochrun's books never miss for me! I really loved both Sadie and Mal, and the Camino itself wove its way through the narrative beautifully. That being said, I feel like the plot of this one was a little weaker than her standard. Mal agrees to help Sadie recapture the queer adolescence she missed out on, which ends up involving a lot of "practice" dating. Despite the fact that I feel like they were pretty upfront with their feelings at multiple points, the story still treated it like they were secretly pining, which I don't feel like made a lot of sense with what we had seen. Minor believability gripes aside, I still had a great time with this book, which I found both funny and sincere.