This is my first ever Ann Garvin book but I have certainly seen her other books on best seller lists and I was interested in checking this one out. I also belong to the Tall Poppy Bloggers group and I love getting Ann’s email newsletters. They are always so funny and well written so I was excited to get this book to read knowing her humor would shine through!

To be honest I was worried this book would be a little heavy and that Ann’s great humor would be overshadowed by some of the heavier topics in the novel, but I wanted to read one of her novels so much and I was totally open to seeing how this one unfolded!

As they say, trust the process right? The second I started the book, I knew I was reading something special. Heavy emotional topics—check. Well timed humor—-check. Entertaining—-check. I was so glad I didn’t let the heavier topics make me wary, this was an excellent read and one that will likely stay with me for a while now that I am done with it.

Summary
A road trip can drive anyone over the edge—especially two former best friends—in bestselling author Ann Garvin’s funny and poignant novel about broken bonds, messy histories, and the power of forgiveness.

Widowed Samantha Arias hasn’t spoken to Holly Dunfee in forever. It’s for the best. Samantha prefers to avoid conflict. The blisteringly honest Holly craves it. What they still have in common puts them both back on speed dial: a mutual love for Katie, their best friend of twenty-five years, now hospitalized with cancer and needing one little errand from her old college roomies.

It’s simple: travel cross-country together, steal her loathsome ex-husband’s VW camper, find Katie’s diabetic Great Pyrenees at a Utah rescue, and drive him back home to Wisconsin. If it’ll make Katie happy, no favor is too big (one hundred pounds), too daunting (two thousand miles), or too illegal (ish), even when a boho D-list celebrity hitches a ride and drives the road trip in fresh directions.

Samantha and Holly are following every new turn—toward second chances, unexpected romance, and self-discovery—and finally blowing the dust off the secret that broke their friendship. On the open road, they’ll try to put it back together—for themselves, and especially for the love of Katie (summary from Goodreads)

Review
One of the things I found so intriguing about this book was the broken bonds and messy history part of the summary between the friends. I am not best friends with anyone I went to high school or college with still. Nothing major, just grew apart and general life stuff. But I love stories about best friends and the complexities of a long standing history between them. I was super excited to see how that unfolded in this book and the summary hinted at some major riffs. I loved how much emotion Garvin put into this one and the friend elements, and I was thrilled to see her humor come through even in the heavy content. I laughed as many times as I teared up. It was a heartfelt read with lots of heart and I really enjoyed it.

Garvin really highlights the complex relationships that women have with one another. In this book Katie, Samantha, and Holly have a long history and a lot of misunderstandings have happened over the years to get them to the point they are currently at when the book opens. It was such a realistic view of how things can go sideways in friendships and how sometimes it takes a life crisis to reconcile those hurt feelings. I loved how well the relationships between the three characters evolved over the book. It felt like there was a lot of growth and that doesn’t always come through in come books but it did in this one.

While this was a heavy read, I read it rather quick. Often when I am reading books with more heavy content, I tend to read them a little more slowly but this one had such great pacing, interesting characters and of course an adorable dog! I couldn’t put it down. I loved reading it and could easily pass a couple of hours, put in a book mark, and then anxiously await the next time I could read it! For me it was a fast read. I could relate to the characters so much, all the way down to the dog! My 16 year old chihuahua is so old and went through a massive mouth infection the last few months and as I was reading about Peanut in this book, I found myself seeing bits of my own dog! The characters are a little quirky but that’s what makes them stand out for me. They are unique, real, and compelling. I know this book sounds heavy but it’s truly a wonderful read and I am looking forward to my next book by Garvin!

Book Info and Rating
Format301 pages, Kindle Edition

PublishedMay 1, 2021 by Lake Union Publishing

Free review copy provided by publisher, Lake Union in partnership with the Tall Poppy Writers/Bloggers, in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own and in no way influenced.

Rating: 5 stars

Genre: womens fiction, contempo lit

Thank you Netgalley, Lake Union Publishing, and Ann Garvin for allowing me to read "I Thought You Said This Would Work." This is not my usual genre, but something about the description intrigued me and I saw the marvelous reviews (Including one from a friend) so I gave it a shot. I am so glad I did! The writing was so good it made me keep reading. The characters were great and I wonder what happened to them next. The story was good, but I'm wondering why Holly held a grudge for so long. What happened doesn't seem to warrant either her asking for an explanation or just being wary instead of outright mean. Only 4 stars because as much as I loved the book, I wouldn't read it again.

Thanks to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for this ARC!
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Where do I start with this book? The friendships. The adventures. The Beautiful Drew. The shaman?

Taking a road trip with two estranged friends, and a washed up reality star hanger-on to find a sick friend's dog, what could go wrong? This is one of those books to read when you're having a bad day, because it will only take you the one day to read. It's fast, and you won't be able to put it down.

My favorite thing about Garvin's writing is how unapologetic her characters are. They own who they are, and don't care what other people think about them, which was so refreshing to read.

Katie, Sam, and Holly realized how special their bond was as friends and as their best interests in mind of each other, as sisters. Despite anything else that was going on in their lives such as Holly and Rosie, Katie needed them and as a result they went on a cross country mission to rescue Peanut and inadvertently Moose. I was so glad that Sam stopped running away and retained herself.Katie' s last line was especially poignant.

This was such a fun book. I enjoyed the story about lifelong friendship and how it endures through many challenges in life.

An Endearing, Entertaining, and Enjoyable Read.

SUMMARY
Samantha Arias and Holly Dundee are former roommates and best friends who haven’t spoken to each other in years Samantha isn’t sure what went wrong with their friendship. But now they must put aside their silent conflict and embark on a weeklong two thousand mile road trip to rescue their best friend’s Katie, one hundred pound Great Pyrenees dog named Peanut.

Katie has been diagnosed with cancer and wants nothing more than her faithful dog by her side. The problem is her ex-husband has Peanut in California and has recently dropped him at in the divorce just to spite his wife and then moved across the country. Now Peanut has been abandoned at a shelter in California, and Katie wants him back.

Samatha and Holly drop everything to combine talents and help Katie. They are joined in California for Peanut’s rescue by Summer Silva. Summer, who is an astute and hilarious media star has interjected herself and her huge personality into this cross-country road trip of healing and self-discovery.

REVIEW
I THOUGHT YOU SAID THIS WOULD WORK in three words is endearing, entertaining, and enjoyable. It is a relatable story of the complexity and dedication of female friendships, and the rescue of something much greater than a diabetic four-legged friend.

The story is full of twists and turns, self-discovery, and even a little romance. It will have you simultaneously laughing and crying throughout this wild ride. The female characters, Katie, Sammie, Holly, and Summer are fierce, funny, and delightfully flawed.

Bestselling author Ann Gavin’s thought-provoking writing is always a pleasure to read. Thanks to Netgalley for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Publisher Lake Union
Published May 1, 2021
Review www.bluestockingreviews.com

A road trip for two old college friends, Samantha and Holly, now estranged after being inseparable when they were younger.
A "new" acquaintance joins the ladies as they travel.
She is the "cream cheese on the celery".
She fits perfectly and is a nice diversion from the hostility and anger that Holly has for Samantha.
Samantha has no idea what she has done after all these years, but she surely will find out!
How could Holly have just "ghosted" her? They were best friends!

Holly and Samantha need to travel and pick up their mutual best college friend, Katie's "support" dog who has been dumped at a shelter by her ex-husband.
Katie has cancer and this is a desperate request to help her feel better.

I felt as if I were in the back seat of the van, watching and waiting for the fireworks to begin on this journey!
I laughed, cried and definitely loved the story!
I read the entire book in a day and really was friends with these beautiful girls and of course the pups too!

This is not your typical girls’ road trip. Sam and Holly were best friends with Katie in college, but for some unknown reason to Sam, Holly no longer is friends with her. When Katie needs someone to rescue her dog, Sam and Holly are thrown together for a wild road trip. Along the way, they examine the true meaning of friendship, and both are able to allow themselves to heal. This was one wild adventure and made me both laugh and cry. I loved it!

Reading this book felt like getting a hug from an old friend, and I definitely plan to recommend this novel to all of mine. "I Thought You Said This Would Work" brings you into the wacky journey three friends (two old, one new), take to reconnect a long-lost dog with their hospitalized friend. My favorite thing about this book was the importance it placed on friendship and made other love stories play second fiddle, a ranking we don't often see play out in fiction. I highly encourage anyone looking for a heartfelt book on the importance of friendship to give this one a read!

Do you ever grab a book because you think it was written just for you, it is exactly what you love? That is why I enthusiastically said “yes” when asked if I would be interested in reading I Thought You Said This Would Work by Ann Garvin.
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Friendship, a road trip, and a Great Pyrenees- I love it!! I have two grand pups that are Great Pyrenees and they are the best, gentle giants!
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It definitely took three women to pick up Peanut, the loveable dog in this book. Two estranged friends head across country to rescue him for their mutual friend, who is fighting cancer in the hospital and just wants her beloved dog back. There is obviously nothing that these women won’t do for their friend.
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This book gave me all the mushy feelings, made me laugh, smile and cry. Told from Samantha’s point of view, we see her love for Katie, who might be fighting cancer again; her troubled relationship with their old college friend, Holly, who is about to become a mom for the first time; her anxiety about her daughter leaving for college; her feelings about her new D list celebrity traveling companion; her sleeping disorder; and her romantic interests all tied up in one comical, loving story. It was quite a trip.
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Stories about women’s friendships are the best! I definitely want to call my best friends and possibly take a road trip, minus the giant dog, we will just take my mini dachshund!
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It, in leu of a trip, read this fun book. It is out now!!

Sam and Holly embark on a roadtrip to pick up their mutual best friend Katie’s volkswagen camper and dog. Sam and Holly used to be best friends as well, but now Sam doesn’t quite know where it went wrong. As they go on this roadtrip there’s loads of flashbacks trying to figure out where the friendship went wrong.

It’s a bit all over the place, which can be charming sometimes. There’s a random B-list celebrity that joins them, there’s a Shaman, and all the usual road trip ingredients. I personally struggled with Sam, if only because she mentions her sleeping disorder every single page, by saying “I let my disorder do it’s thing”. I mean, good for her for accepting her disorder, but we get the point.

Otherwise it was well written, the friendships were relatable and I now want to work at an animal sanctuary.

I had lots of laugh out loud moments in this book and a few sad moments too but overall I felt fulfilled by the end. Just wonderful escapist reading! I’m going to keep my eyes open for more books by this author!

Author Ann Garvin has captured the complexity, fragility, and beauty of female friendship by pairing it with a wonderfully wild and witty road trip in a camper bus from Wisconsin to Utah in her touching novel, I Thought You Said This Would Work. Garvin's gift for character development will have you laughing, crying, and reflecting along with Holly, Samantha, and Katie as they come together to help Katie face a serious illness. My memories of a special trip to Hawaii with a very sick close girlfriend flooded back throughout the book, although our jaunt did not involve quite as many capers as in this story.
These three women were college roommates and friends, with Holly and Samantha's friendship becoming fractured. The common bond as the book began was their deep love and devotion to Katie. Two journeys emerge throughout this story, the first being the circumstances over the passage of time that led to the formation, breakdown and healing of friendship. Next, Holly and Samantha's road trip to retrieve hospitalized Katie's beloved dog, Peanut, who somehow ended up at the Beloved Friends Animal Sanctuary in Utah, is an adventure that you must go on with them.
In addition to the three central ladies, this endearing ensemble of characters includes hospital resident Beautiful Drew, a new actress friend Summer, Dr. Griffin Griffin, a second dog, Moose, and a cat named Utah. This book is an exploration of many unique layers and levels of friendship and love. Barriers such as sickness, trauma, and misunderstandings can certainly challenge yet ultimately deepen the bonds of relationships, as wounds are healed and challenges are faced together. This book moved me to a 5 star level of emotion and enjoyment.
Thank you to Net Galley and Lake Union Publishing for my Advanced Reader's Copy and the pleasure of reviewing this book.
 #IThoughtYouSaidThisWouldWork #NetGalley

I kindly received an eARC advance copy of this book to read and review though NetGalley from Lake Union Publishing.

I just loved this beautiful, richly woven story. Katie is ill, her ovarian cancer is no longer in remission. In her divorce, her ex-husband fought for her giant dog and got him. Now she has found out from his new partner that the dog has been given to a shelter.

Katie asks her best friends Samantha and Holly to fetch her dog and bring him back to her. This logistical nightmare gives widow and single mom Samantha enough time and opportunity to reconnect with Holly who she was friends with back in college.

And they are joined on the days-long road trip home by actress Summer, who Samantha sat next to on the plane trip to California.

The storytelling is funny, sad, and all very real. The characters are described in rich languages that made me feel like they could be my friends too. A stunning read!

Harlequin Junkie Top Pick

When Katie’s ovarian cancer looks like it has returned, her best friends Hollie and Sam are pushed together on a lengthy road trip to recover Katie’s dog Peanut from her awful ex. Unfortunately for both Hollie and Sam, their friendship side of the trio soured at the end of university, and what starts out as a pet recovery trip becomes more of a trip down memory lane and by proxy, an exercise in healing past hurts.

Experienced from Sam’s perspective, we explore the complex love and space she still holds for Hollie despite the coldness that exists between them, and feel every moment of joy, insecurity and bewilderment as she scrambles to figure out why it seems Hollie hates her so much. Remaining in contact with Katie the whole way via hot medical intern and potential romantic interest Drew, it isn’t until a fourth wheel to balance the car in the form of Summer, an out of work TV host joins the adventure, that Sam begins to find the voice she has been missing all of these years.

From beginning to end, this was a deliciously joyous and yet heartbreaking read that balanced comedy and tragedy beautifully. Every character value-added, and as the backstories filled the curiosity gap we are thrown from laughing at Summer’s quirky escapades including a visit to Sharman Sharmansky (gold!), to jaw clenching at Hollie’s acerbic tongue.

At no juncture was this heading in any direction other than the path it travelled, and whilst a relatively simple plot, the arcs and action kernels were priceless in providing depth and opportunity to recover more then faithful Peanut. In experiencing the duality of laughter and loss in one beat and the extremes of love in the other, I Thought You Said This Would Work reminds us all to hold on dear to our friends, and perhaps more so, invites us to speak our truth and ensure that we continue to work on communicating openly and honestly.

Overall, I highly recommend you jump on board with this one, for it will no doubt prompt some self-reflection and perhaps inspire some to fix any failed friendships from the past.

Absolutely loved this book! I loved the three friendships and the different dynamics between them even when one of them is going through something they step in and put aside their differences.

I loved this wonderful book! It, by turns, made me laugh and cry. I THOUGHT YOU SAID THIS WOULD WORK by Ann Garvin should not be missed. Full of quirky characters, messy emotions, strong friendships and their complexities, Garvin has created a story that I could not put down (not that I wanted to).
Samantha, Katie, and Holly were inseparable in college and then came graduation and Holly and Samantha had a falling out. Both remained friends with Katie, but Samantha never understood what happened to end the friendship and make Holly so angry at her. When it looks like Katie’s cancer has returned, there is only one thing that could make her feel better: her Great Pyrenees, Peanut, who her husband got custody of in the divorce and took to California. Peanut has a few issues, the biggest one being diabetic, that prevent him from traveling on an airplane it means a road trip back to Wisconsin in a vehicle big enough not to trigger his anxiety. Samantha will do anything for Katie, but her sleep disorder means it could take much longer to drive back, so she and Holly reluctantly agree to make the trip together. The question becomes whether they can fix their friendship and get Peanut to Katie, or will the road trip be the finale of their friendship?
I adored the characters in this book and with every mile and detour, I wished I could be on the road with them. Make sure you have plenty of time to savor I THOUGHT YOU SAID THIS WOULD WORK because once you get started, Garvin’s prose will wrap itself around you and you will not want to stop until the very last word. When you get to the end, you are going to want to start all over.
Thank you to the publisher for an advanced reader’s copy of this novel. All opinions are my own and freely given.
#IThoughtYouSaidThisWouldWork #AnnGarvin #LakeUnionPublishing #TallPoppyWriters #BloomReads #TallPoppyBlogger

This book was absolutely lovely! While there were both laugh of loud and tearful moments, I gratefully found myself laughing so much more often, and I found myself feeling incredibly fulfilled by the end of the read.

I Thought You Said This Would Work is about friendship, love, healing, death and life. When college best friends who have spent the rest of their adult lives giving each other the silent treatment are sent on a mission by their mutual third best friend, they barely put their differences aside to travel together for the sake of their friend who is back in the hospital with cancer. Their duo quickly turns into a trio with a perhaps unwelcome D-list celebrity guest. Hijinks absolutely ensue. Samantha is conflict avoidant, her once bestie and new road-trip companion is confident and comfortable with conflict, and their newest travel is so fun-loving, she brings the levity. This combination makes for a good story.

While my rating looks like a 5, it is actually a 4.5. I absolutely loved this book, but had to remove half a star for some problematic pieces that I don't think will remain appropriate for very long, if they even are now. There is a joke in the book that uses the word "cripple" and I am unaware of how to properly assess if the term "spirit animal" is appropriate here, but I certainly would flag that term as one that comes up throughout the book.

What I did find absolutely refreshing about this story is that by the time we meet these four women in the story, they have already shed the crappy men in their histories. So many of these books about women in their middle lives include terrible husbands, and while it is clear these women have experience with these, they're gratefully not a main presence in this story, and I for one, was so grateful to just focus on women and a couple of good guys.

Avoid this book if you are triggered by cancer or widowhood, but otherwise, this is a really lovely book that I am sure will fill up your bucket. Pick it up and enjoy the ride.

Type: Ebook download

Posted on GoodReads:
This has to be one of the single best books I’ve read this year. The focus of friendship for our 4 middle aged women was a heart wrenching and at times deeply relatable read. I laughed and cried and felt every moment of these beautiful women and I wanted to hold them and protect them and be their safety net and feel their love in turn. The writing was incredible, I could see each moment and I loved the depth of the characters as well as the breadth of their history together. Garvin truly let you see their hearts and their minds and I adore her for this. As someone who lost a parent to cancer I was worried about how I may react to the cancer in this book, however, while the sadness and grief and anger was there, the focus was on something that was so much more than that, and I adored that love truly was the driving force behind such supportive friendships.

I cannot recommend this enough. When you can get your hands on this book PLEASE do.

My first 5 stars of 2021 and I’m still crying as I write this.

Special thank you to NetGalley and to Lake Union Publishing for letting me read this story and have my heart broken and mended all at once.


Will be releasing a more in depth review on my blog closer to release as well as my Instagram.

This story was such a refreshing read. It was funny, sad, joyous and sentimental. It deals with some hard hitting subjects like homophobia, cancer, growing old and divorce. It always deals with friendship, romance and meeting new people who add something to your life.

I really liked how the author got her point across with it not being too saccharin or banging you over the head with a lesson to be learned. I felt connected to the characters and was so glad to read about older women, like myself, who are strong, independant and there for each other. They have each other's back and learn not to be bitchy to each other. It is a relatable story and one that has some pretty cute animals in it too. What's not to love?