Driving with the Top Down: A Novel

Written by Beth Harbison

Narrated by Orlagh Cassidy

Three women, two weeks, one convertible: sometimes life doesn't take you in the direction you expect...

Colleen Bradley is married with a teenage son, a modest business repurposing and reselling antiques, and longtime fear that she was not her husband's first choice. When she decides to take a road trip down the east coast to check out antique auctions for her business, she also has a secret ulterior motive. Her one-woman mission for peace of mind is thrown slightly off course when sixteen year old Tamara becomes her co-pilot. The daughter of Colleen's brother-in-law, Tamara is aware that when people see her as a screw-up, but she knows in her heart that she's so much more. She just wishes her father could see it, too.

The already bumpy trip takes another unexpected turn when they stop at the diner that served as Colleen's college hangout and run into her old friend, Bitty Nolan Camalier. Clearly distressed, Bitty gives them a story full of holes: angry with her husband, she took off on her own, only to have her car stolen. Both Colleen and Tamara sense that there's more that Bitty isn't sharing, but Colleen offers to give Bitty a ride to Florida.

So one becomes two becomes three as Colleen, Tamara, and Bitty make their way together down the coast. It's a road trip fraught with tension as Tamara's poor choices come back to haunt her and Bitty's secrets reach a boiling point. With no one to turn to but each other, these three women might just discover that you can get lost in life but somehow, true friends provide a roadmap to finding what you're really looking for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Release date: Aug 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781427239433

Beth Harbison

New York Times bestselling author Beth Harbison started cooking when she was eight years old, thanks to Betty Crocker’s Cook Book for Boys and Girls. After graduating college, she worked full-time as a private chef in the DC area, and within three years she sold her first cookbook, The Bread Machine Baker. She published four cookbooks before moving on to writing women’s fiction, including the runaway bestseller Shoe Addicts Anonymous and When in Doubt, Add Butter. She lives in Palms Springs, California. 

Reviews for Driving with the Top Down

[shazjhb · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Sweet easy read. Three people in a car

[lhaines56 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Slow start but picked up. Feel good book about women and relationships and healing all through the course of a road trip. Very good.

[dhaupt_8 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Colleen Bradley is happy with her discordant life but often wonders what would have happened if she hadn’t gotten pregnant 15yrs ago. Wonders if her husband would have still chosen her of if he would have spent his life with someone else. A boy’s trip for her son and husband gives her the perfect opportunity to plan a little road trip of her own to restock her antique shop Junk and Disorderly and to do a little soul searching. But the best laid plans are never faultless and she’s just learned her bump in the road will be sharing it with her recalcitrant 16yr old niece.Motherless and stuck with a father who rarely bothers except for dishing out punishment, which happens often for sixteen-year-old delinquent Tamara Bradley. She knows she’s heading down the wrong path but doesn’t seem able to stop and now she’s expected to go on this lame trip with a tattletale aunt who she doesn’t know or like.Bitty Camalier's life is in the toilet and she just wants to end it all but first she’s going to have one last meal for old times sake at the diner she and her college friends used to frequent, the last place she was happy. But when she leaves not only has her car been stolen with all her money and her suicide weapon but right there witnessing it all is a woman she hasn't seen in ages, her best friend from college who’s picking right up where she left off all those years ago and picking up the sorry pieces of Bitty’s life.What starts out, as a road trip for one quickly becomes a sojourn for these three wounded souls who will be different people at the end of this journey of self-discovery.Driving With The Top Down is a fabulous mix of Fried Green Tomatoes, Steel Magnolias and Thelma and Louise with the one-of-a-kind voice of Beth Harbison. Her storytelling brilliance shines through once again in this at times enlightening, disturbing and genuine tale of three very different women thrown together and all in need of healing. Her characters are funny, witty, wounded and amazingly authentic from the nurturing Colleen, the slightly narcissist/depressed Bitty and the devastatingly crushed and heading straight for disaster Tamara. Readers will laugh and cry, share the triumphs and tragedies but most of all will be right along on this very special journey. Her narrative brings to life the sights, sounds, people and cadence of the south gives a fly on the wall account of her special story. If it’s women’s fiction you love, Southern Fried fiction you crave or a real look at life you’re after this is your next must read.

[w.mdo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I grabbed this from the library when I saw it on the shelf, even though I had a few books already lined up. To be honest, I needed a bit of a palate cleanser after my last two books. Harbison's last novel was a little disappointing to me (Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger), but I loved When In Doubt, Add Butter so much that I was willing to give it a shot. She's a semi-DC based author who grew up in the Maryland suburbs, and I like how she sets her novels locally. Actually, most of the action in this novel takes place during a road trip south. Three women, in the unlikeliest of circumstances, travel toward Florida and away from their deeply unsatisfying lives. Although I definitely skimmed some parts that were dragging (I can handle only so much teenage angst, among other whininess) each woman's story was interesting enough to keep me going. On the other hand, some of the stuff the book addresses (a husband's betrayal, eating/food issues, teenage drug use) were one dimensional. Too many quick fixes for reality, a husband that was there just to be the bad guy, the pat happy endings.On the whole, though, I liked the women enough that I sped though the book, and didn't even mind when the happy endings came on hard. This is chick lit, after all! It was just enough fluff mixed with the right amount of heart. I finished it in a day, didn't feel disappointed at the ending, and now I feel ready to start my next serious book. Total win.