I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Iris doesn’t trust the odds. Not when she has a 1 in 4 chance of inheriting the same vision diagnosis as her sister, Amelia.

When Iris travels to the east coast to help Amelia drive her things back from college, the last person she expects to run into on campus is Declan, her board game club rival, but he’s also there to drive his brother home for summer break. The unlikely occurrence results in the four of them caravaning together to Nebraska.

Iris and Declan are used to competing with dice and cards across a table, but the romantic feelings unfolding as they drive across the map are a total surprise. The odds of falling in love on the road seem low, especially amid car troubles and sister drama. Can Iris look past probability and embrace the unexpected?

Short and Sweet Review

Stops Along the Way follows Iris as she heads on a cross-country road trip with her sister Amelia, only to unexpectedly end up traveling alongside her board game rival, Declan, and his brother. While the trip starts as a practical plan to get everyone home for the summer, it slowly becomes a story about uncertainty, family pressure, disability, and figuring out who you are outside of the expectations you’ve built for yourself. Iris is constantly dealing with the fear that she could inherit the same degenerative eye condition as her sister, and that anxiety shapes a lot of how she approaches life, relationships, and even love.

The strongest part of the book was easily Iris’s internal struggles surrounding her possible diagnosis and her relationship with Amelia. Those moments felt grounded and realistic, and I appreciated how much the story focused on uncertainty and fear about the future. The representation for visual impairment and hearing loss also felt thoughtful and added something unique to the story. There were a few quieter scenes that really worked emotionally, especially when the book slowed down and focused on how differently people experience the world. I also liked the board game angle a lot more than I expected to. It gave the story personality and helped separate it from other YA road trip romances. You could tell the author genuinely cared about that hobby, and those scenes were honestly some of the most fun parts of the book for me. The romance just didn’t fully land. Iris and Declan are supposed to have this rivals-to-romance dynamic, but I never really felt the tension or chemistry between them. It felt like the relationship developed mostly because they were stuck together rather than because of any strong emotional connection. I kept waiting for that moment where I’d finally understand why they liked each other so much, and it never fully came for me. Their conversations were fine, but I wasn’t rooting for them the way I wanted to in a romance-focused story. The road trip itself also felt surprisingly underwhelming. For a book centered around traveling together, there weren’t many memorable stops or chaotic road trip moments. A lot of the plot felt repetitive, and there were several ideas introduced like Iris being an intense planner while Declan is more spontaneous that never really paid off in meaningful ways. The pacing also got a little messy toward the end, especially with the timeline shift and the way the emotional resolution was mostly saved for the epilogue.

Overall, this ended up being a pretty middle-of-the-road read for me. There were definitely things I liked, especially the disability representation and the board game elements, but I never fully connected with the romance or the emotional payoff the story was building toward. Stops Along the Way had a lot of potential, and I really appreciated what it was trying to say about uncertainty, disability, and learning to let go of rigid plans. But the romance lacked chemistry for me, the road trip aspect felt underused, and the ending didn’t feel fully satisfying. I still think readers who enjoy YA contemporaries with strong emotional themes might enjoy this more than I did.