#bookreview: Running Against Traffic by Gaelen VanDenbergh

Paige Scott spent her childhood shuffled between relatives who ignored her, and her adult life hiding in her crumbling marriage to wealthy David Davenport. When David suddenly thrusts her into a remote, impoverished world, Paige is forced to face the betrayals of her past - not to mention the colorful townies of her present. Unexpected friendships and her discovery of running propel her on a jagged and comical journey toward learning how to truly live.

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Running Against Traffic by Gaelen VanDenbergh
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Paige Davenport had it all - a rich husband and an easy socialite life - until her husband drives her out to the middle of nowhere and abandons her at a ramshackle house. For the first time in her easy life, she realizes that 1) she has no true friends, 2) she has never appreciated all the good things in her life until then and 3) she has never actually really lived.

Running Against Traffic is a humorous story of how Paige slowly starts to pull herself together with the help of Deidre, Darnell, Al and Bryce - even if Al and Bryce need just as much help as she does! Paige was annoyingly useless in the beginning - I wanted to slap her silly - but grew over the pages of the book, even though she lapsed a few times.

Al was a conflict of sorts - one thing that bugged me a little was how VanDenbergh left so many questions hanging about him - like what was stopping Al from just sleeping with her? Was he just being gentlemanly? Did he have a problem with it? There were hints and strange conversations with Darnell, his brother, but nothing really concrete - or maybe I was too dense to pick it up. (Or was VanDenbergh trying to keep it clean? If she was, then she shouldn't have even gone there... lol. It felt confusing. Like, I'm going to have you two in compromising situations, but no, not sex. We can't have the two of you actually having sex.)

Overall, Running Against Traffic was a light, interesting read. True, some parts felt a little contrived, but it was an overall uplifting story of how even a spoilt young woman can rise amid challenging circumstances and make something of her life.

* I received a free copy of this ebook in exchange for an honest review.

View all my reviews

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You can pick up Running Against Traffic from AMAZON, BARNES & NOBLE or GOODREADS.

Gaelen VanDenbergh is a writer, runner, and compulsive list-maker who lives in Philadelphia with her family, a fat cat, and several fish. Her debut novel Running Against Traffic, was a Global Ebook Award nominee, a semifinalist in the The Kindle Book Review’s 2013 Best Indie Book Awards, a semifinalist in the Readers' Favorite 2013 International Book Award Contest, Indie Book of the Day, June 30, 2013, a 2013 Beach Book Festival Award nominee, and has received a four star review in InD’tale Magazine. When not writing, Gaelen enjoys reading, running races for charities, and spending as much time in Key West and the Adirondacks as she can.


You can find her here:
WEBSITE: www.gaelenvandenbergh.com
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/AuthorGVD
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/author.gaelenvandenbergh
GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/GVD11


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