Thank you for the opportunities to read this book. I have attempted it on a number of occasions but unfortunately I haven’t been able to get into it.

I got this book back when it was first published, but for some reason couldn't get into it then. I decided to try again and enjoyed it much more this time. I enjoyed reading about Sheridan's trip across America and the people she met along the way, including the purchase of her red car Betty. I haven't been to America before so I felt like I learned a bit about the country. The memoir was emotional and honest. A side trip to England and Sheridan meets the love of her life. She has some solo travelling and some with others. Plenty of laughs along the way.

Really different to what I normally read, great story, plot and pacing. Highly recommend to those looking for a book that makes you cry and laugh at the same time.

Wish You Were Here is a heart-felt memoir filled with pathos and wry humour.

Feeling utter despair when her husband announces he doesn’t want to be married anymore Jobbins concocts a crazy plan to drive across America Thelma & Louise style.

I’ve never been much of a memoir reader. I tend to find them slow going and I find the first person past tense narration hard to get into.

What I did love about the story is Jobbins’ candour. She opens up to her readers and pours out all her dashed hopes and her fears. The story tells like a travelogue across America with humorous and sometimes life affirming situations occurring across the country as Jobbins travels from LA to Colorado, Nebraska and Pennsylvania via numerous wrong turns dropping in on an eclectic group friends and relatives along the way.

If you’ve ever felt like life has let you down and you just need to break free and find yourself again Wish You Were Here is the read for you.

I received a free ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in 2017, and I'm sorry it took me so long to get around to reading it. Because I really, really enjoyed it.

Sheridan Jobbins (whom I vaguely remember from my childhood as a reporter on Simon Townsend's Wonder World) is reeling from the unexpected break up of her marriage, so to try and sort her head out, she decides to drive across the US in a hot car and see what she can see.

This is a mainly true story about where she goes, what she sees and the many and varied people she meets. It's a testament to what can happen when you open yourself up to possibilities. I found it funny, entertaining, sometimes sad, but always rewarding and I'd thoroughly recommend it.

It's not as rambling and full of side-stories as Bill Bryson and all the more readable for that - just like riding shotgun with your bestie. It's also nice to hear an Australian voice and she's so honest about her flaws and foibles that I just wanted to give her a hug.

Thank you for the chance to read this, but this is not my cup of tea.

*This book was received via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

After her marriage ends and she has smashed much of her beloved china, Sheridan Jobbins heads off on a journey that will change her life. Sheridan sets off on her journey of self-discovery driving across America in a new red car heartbroken although not for long. Not only does she find herself but she also finds love and trouble along the way. I really enjoyed the writing style and the raw honesty conveyed through the writing. I did at times find myself wanting to shake her though due to her impulsive decisions however it did lead to quite a few hilarious situations that made for a good read. Overall, this was a very humorous read with the mishaps Sheridan gets into very enjoyable to read about; although I'm sure they weren't enjoyable for her when she was experiencing them.

A deeply personal journey of one woman losing and finding love. Told while trekking across America.

(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

Reeling from the devastating collapse of her marriage to the man she thought was the love of her life, after a late night enjoying smashing all her china a little too much Sheridan Jobbins decides she needs to do something drastic to save her sanity.
Her solution is to buy a hot red car and drive across America. Hopelessly unprepared and heartbroken, she sets out on the road trip of a lifetime determined to find herself - and ironically finds love instead. But not before she has a whole bunch of crazy adventures and wrong turns along the way.
Every woman with a heart and a sense of humour will want jump on board this unforgettable ride -and it's the best antidote for anyone who's ever had her heart broken and thought she might not survive.

*3.5 stars*

Heartbroken and newly single, Sheridan Jobbins sets off to the US on a voyage of self-discovery - and, amid all the twists and turns that the trip brings, she finds love along the way.

There was lots to love about this book - most importantly were the honest emotion that poured forth on every page. From her heartbreak and sense of loss, to the sense of adventure and humour, we get to feel everything Sheridan was feeling as she navigated through her life after marriage.
I was also intrigued by the cultural clashes as well - although America isn't that far removed from us in cultural terms, the gulf between us seems both wide and narrow on alternate pages. One minute she is freaking out about guns and religion, the next we are reading about good deeds done by strangers. It is compelling reading in that regard.

The main reason this didn't rate better than it has is simple - the start, maybe even the first half, of the book was so slow. Moved-like-molasses slow. I counted maybe 3 or 4 times when I felt like just deleting the book and fining something else to read. Which is totally unfair in the long run - it is a great story but I would have just preferred for the start of the book to really drag me into her story but it just didn't...

On the whole, this was a funny, yet touching, story that has a few minor issue with pacing. Would recommend for those who love a good second-chance romance story - but for real, not fictional.


Paul
ARH

Wish You Were Here has been fun to read. Packed with amusing observations on men be they husbands, boyfriends or car dealers it reads like a chat over the kitchen table with your bestie. I loved sharing in her travels across America.
Light, witty and irreverent, yet strangely fascinating this story kept me turning the pages to see what Sheridan would get up to next.

After a few chapters I almost gave up on this one, because it felt more divorce memoir than travel memoir (and I just wasnt really up for that). But I'm so glad I stuck with it, because by the time Sheridan hit the road on her drive across the US I was hooked.

She manages to entwine her thoughts and feelings about her life and marriage and divorce with anecdotes from her trip in a very subtle way. Her voice is so authentic and honest, and often really funny but also quite moving.

In the end this was a fantastic example of the "women's stories" that I'm really into reading at the moment, and I loved it (this is why we should read outside our comfort zones people!)

It's a little bit of a cliche, the idea of setting off on a big grand adventure that doubles as search to find yourself following a breakup/death in the family/career blowout/complete and total meltdown (delete as applicable). Having never done it myself - out of financial necessity, my major meltdowns are solved by tears, overeating and alcohol, lots of alcohol - and having little in common with a recently separated thirty-something filmmaker and journalist, I wasn't exactly sure if I really would wish I was there (geddit?).

Happily, Sheridan Robbins, her cast of fabulous characters, and her very sexy red Camaro (named Betty, of course), had my back. Funny, touching, and just a little bit adventurous, Wish You Were Here is an engrossing read. Following Robbins on an ill-prepared road trip across the US, chasing the almost mythical Route 66 in a bid to move on from her suddenly failed marriage, Wish You Were Here covers the places she went, the people she met, and the (many) emotional roadblocks along the way.

Robbins, fucked up but fighting, is a refreshing and honest narrator, unafraid to tell stories that left me rolling my eyes at her childishness or facepalming hard over her self sabotage. Delightfully quirky, picking up teacups along the way, desperately searching for classic Americana and recording mini soundscapes instead of taking pictures, she falls in love with a philosopher, while men fall in love with her car. Witty and relatable, her anecdotes fall together beautifully, turning what could have been just a series of travel vignettes into a cohesive adventure filled with equal parts anger, hope, grief, and love.

It's a story of both getting over and getting on, punctuated by a stay in London, where Robbins encounters Scott, a philosophy student and all round gamechanger. If the first half of her drive is her coming to terms with her identity without her ex-husband, the second is her figuring out what being in a new relationship means in the aftermath of the death of the first. All too often, we focus on the first half of that journey, on (usually) a woman establishing herself as a single entity, and when that's achieved, the story is done. We can all rest easy in the knowledge that the struggle is over. But when Robbins meets a man that, quite literally, leaves her swooning, it actually makes a bit of a mess of things. All that emotional hard work, the lessons learned, the moments of clarity as she looked out across the Grand Canyon, it's all threatened by the arrival of Scott the Welsh Philosopher. Is she truly over her ex-husband? Is she ready for something so serious so soon? Is the longest third date in history about to become the worst in history too?

It would have been so, so easy for this book to fall slap bang into the category of uppity tales of female self discovery. Honestly, when I read a little more about Robbins before I got stuck in, I really thought it was going to (remember when I said I had nothing in common with a thirty something filmmaker and journalist?). But this isn't a book about eating pasta in Rome until you have to go up a (still small) dress size, or having enough money to just pack everything in and disappear until you achieve some kind of personal Nirvana.

Instead, Robbins' lessons are her own, and while you might find yourself nodding along with one or two of them (one in particular, learned looking at the works of Turner, struck me right between the eyes), you won't walk away from this book feeling like the only way to fix things is to do something as drastic and financially dangerous as buying a Chevy and driving yourself across America. This isn't self congratulation or advice from a higher plane of being. Not at all. It's a fun, heartfelt travelogue, and it's all the better for it.

I rarely read travel books, but the hint of someone using travel to find themselves is suddenly interesting. There’s lots to love in here, and the solo driving experiences are great, I just wanted more of them in the second half too.

After suffering a break up of some kind (whether it be a death or divorce/separation), a character going off on an overseas trip to ‘find her/himself’ has become a bit of a cliche for movies, books etc.
And this is the general premise of Wish You Were Here. However, in this case, don’t let it put you off reading Sheridan Jobbins’s memoir.

Jumping in a car and driving off into the unknown without any real plan of where to stay or what to do on the way is such a romantic dream for many, including me. But as there’s no way I could afford such a trip (that whole meme about wanting to travel but only affording to get to the bottom of the stairs could have been written by me), so I’m pleased to have hitched a ride with Sheridan in Betty’s passenger seat.

Sheridan has found out her husband is cheating on her, and he’s frankly unrepentant, so… road trip!

Sheridan buys a car (the aforementioned Betty, a name Jobbins uses so much throughout the book that I can’t really remember what make or model Betty was, only that she is big, noisy, very American and the wet dream of most of the males mentioned in the book) and sets off on a cross country trip through America, with a flight to England added in for extra spice.

The best thing about the book is its humour. I laughed so many times. I especially liked the insights into cultural differences. One that stuck with me (because I really notice it an awful lot in the online world) is that Australians normal way is to make jokes and try and be funny, and it's difficult to tell when they’re being serious, and that Americans are the opposite - that is, their normal state is serious and they need to work hard at joking (might explain why their comedy shows always need 40 writers too!).

Yes, Sheridan makes fun of the Americans on her trip quite often, but she evens it out by giving us several scenes where people she has only just met in the country carry out charitable acts without asking for any reward or payment in return whatsoever.

Sometimes the trip is downright frightening: so many guns (and even though I don’t think it’s ever specified, I get the sense this book is set about 15-20 years ago, so the thought of the guns in America now, in 2017, freaks me out completely), religious zealots, hotels with creepy dolls… But then Jobbins will again throw in one of those touching scenes that will warm your heart and restore your faith and you’ll forget about fretting and travel warnings.

Although a memoir, the book reads like a novel and I quite liked that about it. If I had a complaint, it would be that I sometimes got confused about the minor characters Sheridan knows/is related to/stays with. I didn’t really know who was who on occasion, and found I didn’t really care.

Too, I’m almost loath to admit (especially considering the dedication/author’s notes etc), that I found the romantic aspect of the book slowed down its pace. I thought Wish You Were Here rolled along much quicker in the first half, and it became a little bogged down with camping and tantrums and who was saying ‘I love you’ to whom. I will say, however, that there is an endgame with the romantic plotline. Sheridan comes through her ordeal (for wont of a better word) a better person who can move on and see her future and again, this was quite touching, in amongst the humour.

A strong 4/5

I really didn't know what to expect from this book but I loved it. Reading it you can tell that she is in show business as she has a way with words and enjoys a bit of drama. The adventures are crazy, the stories as she travels are amusing and then in the emotional stuff adds to the package. All up, a great read and would make an excellent gift. The kind of book that could be read in a couple of days over the festive season.

‘In this moment I am perfect. I am free to be whoever I want, and all I want to be is a woman in a red spotty dress, speeding into her future in a shiny red car.’

So, Sheridan Jobbins’s marriage collapses and then she smashes all her china. Life as Sheridan has known it has just ended. What will she do next? Well, what could be better than leaving Australia, and then buying a car and driving across America? Surely she’ll find herself along the way, and work out what to do next?

Thus begins a chaotic journey across the USA, through the past and into (eventually) a brighter future. Meet Betty, a red Chevrolet Camaro, not the most practical car for Sheridan’s drive, but she certainly turns heads. Sheridan Jobbins may not be very well prepared for this adventure, but she’s going to make the most of it.

While I enjoyed parts of this book, I kept shaking my head in disbelief. I couldn’t decide whether to admire her impulsive behaviour, or chide her for it. Still, she survived. And the journey itself is a discovery of self and a triumph of sorts. There is more than one way to find yourself, and this particular way worked for Sheridan Jobbins. Not a journey for me, but an interesting set of experiences, worth reading about.

Note: my thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Australia for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

After returning from a trip and discovering her husband of 11 years and love of her life in bed with another woman (<i>"I just can't stand the thought of sleeping with only one woman for the rest of my life."</i>), journalist and screenwriter Sheridan Jobbins has trouble getting over him and getting her life back on track. She fights back by first therapeutically smashing all their defective crockery and then embarking on a trip across America in a red Chevy Camaro she names Betty.

Yes, it might sound cliched but what a trip she has. From LA to the East Coast, meandering on her own, finding unexpected sights and meeting people along the way as she reflects on her life so far with all the ups and downs, joys and heartache. After visiting friends in Connecticut, she takes a side trip to London where she stays with old friends and attends a party with Philosophers where she connects with a handsome younger man called Scott. Her original plan to share the return trip across America from Washington to LA with a good friend comes unstuck and instead she ends up on a road trip with Scott and Matt, an Australian she met while visiting friends in Washington. They end up bonding over a shared love of music and books, sharing the driving, and stopping where they want to pitch their tents to save money on accomodation. After shedding one of her companions in New Orleans, Sheridan continues on with Scott, a man she met in London, realising that she is both falling in love and learning to re-adjust to life without her long time husband and friend.

Filled with lots of humorous anecdotes and interesting people, Sheridan likes nothing better than to get off the beaten track and discover the quirky and unusual, collecting both kitsch and classic china (to replace the broken pile back home) along the way. She talks about trying to be happy in the moment and letting go of her angst and despair about her marriage and failed attempts to have a child, although there are times when her anger still breaks through and causes her to lash out at Scott and the world. By the end of her trip her bravery and impulsiveness in running away to drive across America has payed off and she is ready to go back and face her old life.

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed Wish You Were Here by Sheridan Jobbins.    Ok, I'm telling you. I enjoyed it a lot.    The book was written as an anniversay present to her now husband Scott, a man I fell a little bit in love with as I read their story.   As far as presents go I'd have to say I've never heard of a better one, and as far as third dates go this one takes the cake.

When we meet Sheridan she's trying to get over the shock of her failed marriage.   They'd been best of friends and remained friends after the marriage broke down but whereas he moved on Sheridan was unable to.      She seemed unwilling and unable to put the relationship behind her.    She tries and sometimes feels she's succeeded, but other times she's overcome by anger and overwhelming grief.  So she decides to run away, putting her life on hold and heading off to America for a coast to coast adventure.   Personally, I'm not much into driving holidays but I so wished I was there.    Without having to pack a thing her writing activated all my senses and took me on her journey of discovery.       Through her words I explored the American landscape, enjoyed encounters with the locals, I tagged along as she re-discovered herself and lived vicariously as she moved beyond her grief and towards new love.  I laughed out loud at her quirky (so very Aussie) sense of humour and agonised on her behalf when she occasionally flipped out, when words were used like weapons in a seeming attempt to sabotage this new relationship, or when her temper flared out of control.  I loved her honesty about these and so many other aspects of her life.   I couldn't help smiling at this passage describing her sometimes erratic behaviour  "How reassuring to find something that was bedrock-stable while I ping-ponged from Nutsville to Love and back several times a day".

There's so much to commend in this book and it covers so much territory, both literally and figuratively.   It's touching, it's funny, it encourages adventure,  inspires action and has a gorgeous romance to cap it all off.   Next time I travel I simply must have a mnemonic recording of my own, it was a stroke of genius.     I loved it and pretty much everything about this book.  A really enjoyable read.

Happy anniversay Scott and Sheridan.   May your life continue to be filled with love.   Many thanks to Hachette Australia and NetGalley for the opportunity of reading this book in exchange for an honest review.   It was a real pleasure.

I loved reading this travel review with a very personal perspective. It made the details about the trip more interesting with lots of thoughts and experiences added in - especially relationships. Definitely a good read.

When Sheridan Jobbins’ marriage is a rug that her then-husband pulls out from under her, she takes the opportunity to destroy all of their china then run away to America to find herself. Along the way she finds a companionable car, a little bit of kindness and a lot of self-discovery.

To be honest, dear reader, Wish You Were Here isn’t what I would call my usual literary fare. It caught my eye because the cover is vibrant and lovely and oozing with travel adventures. Once I read the blurb, there was something that piqued my interest though I couldn’t tell you what it was. I downloaded it, I read it and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Jobbins’ story of self-discovery and reclamation.

Jobbins tells her story with heart, nerve and a generous helping of Aussie humour. From comparing life in America and life in Australia to anecdotes filled with “take the piss” style humour, Wish You Were Here takes the reader along on an often laugh out loud funny ride.

Between, and sometimes alongside, the humour is a story filled with raw human emotions. Vulnerability walks hand in hand with anger with grief and pain the clouds that block their sunlight. Robbins has intwined all of the emotions she experienced during this time beautifully. The story also paints a picture of the America many people don’t get to experience because they’re not wounded and travelling alone through a strange country.

I did not go into Wish You Were Here knowing Jobbins, the child-star, actress, producer and writer, but I came out of it admiring Jobbins, the lioness who fiercely reclaimed herself in a strange land surrounded by even stranger, and sometimes gun-toting, people.