Okay, its official: the move is over. I am now a resident of my mother's tiny tiny house. One that is fortunately filled to the rafters with books, including the new Karen Rivers!

The Quirky Girls' Guide to Rest Stops and Road Trips is the third installment in the Haley Andromeda's life. They don't really need to be read in order, though I do recommend reading them all, because they're hilarious. And this new one is no exception. It’s the summer after graduation, and Haley's best friends are heading off to do exciting things (Harvard and modeling in New York, respectively). Whereas Haley is hanging around with her dad and his pregnant girlfriend. But she's got a plan! The plan is to take the old VW van she got for her birthday down to San Diego, and write a book about her experiences. It’s supposed to be top secret, but since Haley can't keep a secret to save her life, it quickly leaks out to the aforementioned best friends, as well as her boyfriend, and her arch enemy, Izzy. Eventually Haley manages to save enough money from her crummy waitressing job to head off, oddly enough, with Izzy in tow. That's the great thing about Haley: she's not much of one for questioning things.

That's the basic plot of the book. But really the important thing about these books is Haley herself. She's frighteningly neurotic, which translates into a lot of laughs. I've heard Haley described as Bridget Jones for teens. Which is fairly accurate, except that Haley is so quintessentially Canadian. In a West Coast way. I know this girl, I went to high school with her, and I still run into her at the grocery store every now and then.

Regardless of whether you're familiar with hippie offspring or not, The Quirky Girls' Guide to Rest Stops and Road Trips is a must read.

The Quirky Girls' Guide to Rest Stops and Road Trips by Karen Rivers
ISBN 1551929074
284 pages (plus 5 pages of acknowledgments that must be read)