I had a lot of issues with this book, which unfortunately is mostly just because of formatting. I had to read it on the Netgalley Shelf app, which I could only get on my phone. Then, while trying to read it in the interactive way, it would tell me to go to page so and so… however I couldn’t pinpoint a page because the Netgalley app only did by location/percentage.

As far as the book itself, I could’ve read it through without the interactiveness but I really wanted that particular experience. The little bit that I got to read was very exciting and entertaining. I will just have to wait for the finished copy so I can better navigate the interactive element

Thank you to NetGalley and Perseus Books for providing an electronic copy of Major Detours in exchange for an honest review.

This title offers a lot of promise, though the writing style can tend towards Middle Grade rather than Young Adult at times.

While the concept is fun and the plot line enjoyable, unfortunately the title is let down in the current electronic format and there seems to be a few bugs in the system which means that the interactive nature of this book is less enjoyable than it could be.

Overall this title shows promise and, in physical format, could be a real hit among younger YA readers, however there is a long way to go in terms of ebook.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of Major Detours in exchange for an honest review!

This was my first ever choose your own adventure book and I overall I truly did enjoy it. I loved that some of the choices made resulted in small outcomes, where others completely changed the outcome of the book. I have no experience whatsoever with tarot cards or tarot history, so at times there were definitely terms that I wasn’t familiar with but I didn’t find that that took away from my journey. I do believe the author overall did a great job explaining the basics of tarot to that I at least had an understanding of where the story was going and how tarot played an important role.

The hardest part about this experience for me was definitely the ebook format. I couldn’t get the epub to transfer to my Kobo so I had to read this book on my phone, which is not something I enjoy doing as I prefer a bigger screen. Without page numbers, it was hard to navigate to the desired page after making your choice, so I ended up just reading the entire book with all possible outcomes. In print form, this would be easier to follow and much more enjoyable.

I liked that each chapter alternated between Amelia and Chase, two of the four main characters. While I didn’t personally connect with any of the characters, I did enjoy choosing their paths throughout the book and seeing where the decisions led them. My favourite part of the book was Part 2: Coupled. I thoroughly enjoyed the maze scene and how a wrong decision resulted in the destruction of one of the missing cards.

While the format did not result in me being able to read the book properly, I really did enjoy Major Detours. I would recommend this to anyone wanting to try a choose your own adventure book!

I read A LOT of Choose your Own Adventure books as a kid, so I was really looking forward to reading this story!

Because this was in ebook form, for some reason I found it incredibly difficult to follow and got confused with the story and the concept of the tarot cards, although I think the concept is amazing and so interesting!!

I made it about 40% through before I gave up, lol, but I REALLY want to try this book again in its physical form and properly review it as I was totally fascinated with the concept and enjoyed the characters.

I will be back with a more complete and comprehensive review when I get my hands on a physical copy!

i really love choose your path novels and they give me a lot of nostalgia so i loved this book. 4/5 stars. would recommend.

Road trips?? AND Tarot cards?? I instantly knew I had to read this book. Road trips is one of my favorite tropes and I've always been really interested in tarot and the like. That alone had my attention, but I got very intrigued with the fact that this was a "choose your own adventure book." It was super interesting! I've never read a book like that before.

Thank you netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this early!

2.5/5 Stars

I would love to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this book, because if you know me you know I LOVE 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books, but an epub/kindle/netgalley pdf version of this book confused the heck out of me. Flipping to specific pages was impossible for me on any platform I tried to read it on. I ended up DNFing about 30% of the way through because I couldn't follow anything even close to a linear storyline.

Please fix these issues before the Kindle version is released!

3.5 stars - thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this eARC!
I enjoyed this book - it was fascinating to read a choose-your-adventure-style book once more, and though I wasn't really sold on the concepts of tarot as part of the story, it dragged me in pretty quickly. I liked the queer relationships and the fact that everyone has their own journey of self-discovery and character development. The various POVs really helped bring out the character growth.
The reason I'm giving it 3.5 stars is mostly because the choose-your-own-adventure didn't work in the format I read it. I couldn't flip to the specific page, which confused me several times and threw me out of the story. There's also the issue with misgendering the character that comes out as non-binary with pronouns they/them - editing will help but *please* do that before the book is actually published. I'm not sure what format this book will be published in, but the bit at the back that will help you discover what type of person you are don't work in an ebook because you can't mark things easily and flipping back and forth doesn't work as well as it should.
I think the experience of reading this as an eARC might have shaped my perception of this book, but I might give it another try in paperback, to see if it works better!

This was a fun, easy read that I genuinely enjoyed. I really like the cover and the story itself, and it was something I wouldn't normally pick up for myslef.

I'm ecstatic that Choose Your Own Adventure books are making a comeback. I lived for them growing up. I had so many well-worn dog-earred copies. I even had the Goosebump ones. Apparently, though, I have no idea how to make them work digitally because I've tried across multiple apps. But, Major Detours is staying on the top of my tbr until I can get a physical copy to get lost in.

Thank you to Netgalley and Running Press Kids for the review opportunity.

I loved reading Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid. I haven't read one in a long time and I didn't realize how much I missed it. This was a great book for a lot of reasons, but I think the format worked especially well with the tarot aspect of the plot and choosing your own destiny.

Four friends are going on the epic road trip of their dreams a few weeks before they separate for college. They've been inspired by Amelia's grandmother's tarot deck, and are using it to determine the way this trip will go. This deck has meant so much to this group, especially Amelia and her longtime best friend Chase. As they quest to discover secrets about this very special tarot deck, they will learn more about themselves and each other. Four cards have been missing from the deck, and they just might be able to find them. The four of them solve clues and rely on each other. Along the way, they (and you as the reader) get to decide each turn of fate. It's a fun, fast paced thrill ride, great for all kinds of teen readers. There's friendship, romance, a mystery, adventure, and the mythology of the tarot. And with the different choices you get to make as a reader, you won't get the same story twice.

One of my favorite aspects of this book was all of the knowledge the author has about the tarot. I have always been supremely fascinated by the tarot and this book fed that hunger for knowledge about it. I was definitely inspired to learn more about the tarot after reading this book. It was very well done. I know teens will gobble this one up. I know I did!

Thank you to NetGalley for the digital ARC!

This book took me completely by surprise. Admittedly, I didn’t know what to expect, having never read a choose-your-own-adventure book since I was a kid, but it was thoroughly enjoyable. I loved the agency of being able to play around with the characters and their decisions, but it was also nice to take a sneak peek at how differently things might have gone given different choices.

My favourite part of the story, however, was the characters. This was one of those wonderful rare occasions where I could actually see my younger self reflected and represented in a YA novel, with a teenage cast that felt consistently real and believable. The found family of the protagonists was everything, and the LGBTQ+ rep sparked some really thoughtful conversations that could be so helpful to its young adult readers.

The plot featured a fun adventure that the reader doesn’t have quite as much control over as much as the trajectory of the character relationships, yet rest assured that your decisions will come back to bite you. Even the side characters and each location we visited were bursting with life and energy that made this an engaging read from start to finish.

This was so good and I LOVE LOVE LOVE the cover.
I've never really read a book like this before, but let me tell you, it was really good.
This was a decently quick and fast paced read. And it was really fun to read in the rain:)

highly recommend !!!

This is 3.5 stars, rounded down to 3.

The major turnoff for me regarding this book was definitely the Netgalley format, this needed to be a PDF file, and the epub gave me a headache, and is most of the reason for me taking nearly 3 weeks (you read that right, THREE FREAKING WEEKS) to read this, and while I want to rate this objectively and not let that affect my rating, I really can't because it makes up a big part of my discontent, and now when I think back to the reading experience, I just remember exhaustion.

So, most of my experience was reading the prompts to go to some age, count the number of pages flipped and number of barriers (as in separators for content) passed and hope to God I didn't spoil myself for anything and start reading the wrong thing. My original plan was actually to finish the book like one book, and then go back and read what all other choices I could have made, but by the time I was done with this book, I was done with this book.

The story in general is pretty interesting, but since I'm not very well versed in the tarot world, I was pretty out of my depth for a lot of time. And while things did start making sense by the end, I still don't know what some major stuff means.

One thing I really loved was the way the small choices in the beginning that didn't seem to make any sense turned out to be big influencers in the end. Though I would have liked some better contrasting choices (some of them would make no sense one way or the other, and I would end up randomly selecting one to just move on), my overall experience was very nice, especially with the horoscopes we filled out at the end (which definitely fit in with what I wanted my characters to be).

The characters by themselves seemed very fickle somehow? I don't know, I was never very interested in the characters, but I did give them all happy endings! (See my status updates for more on the horoscopes and choices made) Though that was more the result of me desperately needing some happy endings rather than actual want for these characters specifically to have happy endings (Logan, for example, did not vibe with me).

Overall a nice experience, but would have been much better with a better format. I would recommend it to lovers of choices books (get a better format though)(even some intralinking would have made this better), and tarot lovers. I really don't know who else I could recommend this to.

Thank you NetGalley for a free e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This is a fun read. I love the choose your own adventure aspect and that the book revolves around the tarot deck. I was not very familiar with tarot and feel like I learned a lot.
Onto the characters- each had their flaws but the way they overcame the detours they faced showed real character development through out the story.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book and seeing how the choices I made moves the story along.
Also loved that at the end there were guides to see what choices lead to different kinds of personalities.

To be quite honest, I could not figure out the formatting of this book since it listed page numbers and they weren't available in the ebook copy; as a result, I couldn't follow the story at all. Looking forward to reading it in its final form in September.

I haven’t read a choose your own adventure style book in years and I really enjoyed reading one again. I loved all the characters and loved the writing of novel. I enjoyed switching between Amelia and Chase’s point of views and seeing the way they interpret different things. I will definitely be reading Major Detours again.

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of the book.

This is the first choose your own adventure book I've ever read, but I wasn't able to choose because it was difficult to do so in the e-book.

The story revolves around four friends Amelia, Chase, Cleo and Logan going on a road trip together before their colleges start. But their main motive is to solve the mysteries of the tarot deck Amelia inherited from her grandma. As they advance in their trip, they find that the deck might be more special than they thought.

The characters were only somewhat relatable for me. I liked how this adventure also leads to sorting out their personal struggles. But I did feel like the things were being dragged sometimes.

Overall this book was good adventure and I would like to see a second part of the story.

This one just didn't work out so well with the Ecopy. I did go back and try it on my iPad and that worked a little better than the Netgalley app. I think this will be much easier with a print copy vs. ebook. After figuring out how to work it. I fell in love with this choose your own adventure. I fell for these back when Goosebumps was a newish thing and this just rekindled my love for these. The edition and use of the Tarot worked out so well and was very inventive.

Major Detours is a book that brings me back to my childhood!
Full of choose your own adventures and go to this page, I was left feeling nostalgic and so happy with the twists and turns of Amelia and her friends road trip! A real coming of age story that made me feel as if I was along for the ride with them