The Long Way to Byron

About this book

On her way to her best friend’s wedding, singer Pip Ashworth’s campervan dies in the flooded outback. Her only ride is the best man: a grumpy widowed wildlife vet with a ute, an orphaned joey and no wish for company. A warm, funny road-trip romance.

Six days. One ute. Eighteen hundred kilometres. And the one person she was never supposed to fall for.

Wedding singer Pip Ashworth has built a whole personality out of being easy to like — which is handy, because four months ago her boyfriend cut her from the band and dumped her by text in front of ninety wedding guests and one filming phone. Now she’s flown to the far side of the world to sing at her best friend’s Byron Bay wedding, and her clapped-out campervan has just died in the flooding middle of the Australian outback.

Jack Dunmore would like her to leave. The grumpy widowed wildlife vet doesn’t fly, doesn’t do weddings, and very much does not want a relentlessly cheerful English optimist in his ute. But Jack is the best man, Pip is the maid of honour, the roads east are washing out one by one, and there’s an orphaned joey in the back seat that needs feeding every four hours.

What should be a two-day drive becomes six, across closed crossings and single-bed roadhouses, with a baby kangaroo, an arthritic dog, and two people determined not to fall for the worst possible person. He sees straight through her sunshine. She fills the silence he’s guarded for three years. And somewhere under a sky with far too many stars, the only rule that ever mattered is the one they’re both about to break.

A warm, funny, swoony road-trip romance about being chosen versus being kept — and about taking the long way home. For readers of Emily Henry, Tessa Bailey, and Mhairi McFarlane.