I love the interactive aspect of this book. As a young adult reader, it's difficult to find choose your own adventures for this age group, so I'm glad to see that this might be a trend that is coming back! Makes it fun to read with others and compare adventures!

This was a cute read; funny and with sweet moments. I tried the dynamic part and liked it very much, I think it'd be better in the physical edition and it'd be totally worth buying it.

The content and style of the book were great. I loved getting to know the characters and making decisions for them. It reminded me of the Choose Your Own Adventure books of my childhood. I also enjoyed the tarot aspect of the story, as it's something fun to me. The romantic aspects of the storyline were fine, not a big boost or drawback. I wish I had friends reading it at the same time to see how their stories shook out compared to mine.

Sadly, the Netgalley interface did this book a disservice. It was harder to navigate and really took away from the enjoyment.

First of all, thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with this eArc!

This was so fun! I’ve never read a “choose your own story” book before! And this was really enjoyable. This will definitely be a new genre I keep my eye on!

(Ps. The cover is stunning too!)

3.5 stars

It was a long time since the last "choose your own adventure" I read and starting Major Detours I was eager to see a new story take shape through my choices.
In the beginning, to be honest, I was a bit disappointed. Of course, the book left the reader to take several decisions, but they seemed quite inconsequential since they did not affect the story in a significant way.
Going on, however, those choices started to matter more and more opening to very different scenarios and alternative endings. This was, in my opinion, the greatest strength of this book: the possibility to see how even the littlest decisions we take can add up making us what we are.

As a total newbie in the tarot world, I really enjoyed how the author took the time to explain the multiple meaning embedded in each card. Above all, I liked the idea of considering the tarot as a way to get to know yourself better.

What I found lacking, though, was a deeper connection to the characters. The author wove many threads but did not expand enough on any of them, making me caring only marginally for the four friends embarked on this adventure - the only exception was Chase, whose pains and struggles actually affected me and made me root for him.

I loved it! This book was an amazing read and I won't spoil it for you but it has excellent rep and the storyline fits in with the tarot theme so well.

This books follows four friends - Amelia, Chase, Cleo and Logan - on a quest to find more about Amelia's grandmother's tarot deck, which is incomplete, and the obstacles they face along the way.

As the book progresses, you get to choose your own path throughout the whole story. Since I read the ebook, it made it difficult to follow the path I was choosing because none of the pages were numbered. I'm sure this won't be an issue on the actual book, but it made my reading experience a lot less fun because instead of enjoying the story I was more focused on going back to make sure I was following the right path.

Now, for the aspects of the story itself. As someone who doesn't really now a lot about tarot (or anything, really), I really liked how the author took time to explain everything. It wasn't difficult to follow at all, although sometimes I felt we were given too much information at once. The plot was enjoyable but since every problem was solved in the blink of an eye, I think it had an impact on how I felt about the characters. Maybe my teenage self would've loved every aspect of this book, but I couldn't care less about any of them.

All in all, this was still an enjoyable read and I would still recommend this to a younger target audience.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC

Major Detours is the first "choose your own adventure book" that I've ever read...ad I enjoyed it so much! It's very unique and innovative YA novel. There are several different possible endings and that's something that instantly grabbed my attention. I loved it!

The pages are not numbered, which makes it impossible for me to follow the characters’ on their journey. The story is so interesting, but I couldn't keep on reading without the proper page numbering! The star rating I had to add IS NOT FOR THE STORY. It’s only For the formatting. I would be happy to read the book and give my feedback if the formatting was corrected.

<i>ARC provided by NetGalley for an Honest Review</i>
This is a hard book for me to review and much of that has to do with the ARC copy itself. The arc formatting and editing was off which made going to a specific page impossible as there were no page numbers. Not only that but having to use the NetGalley app proved rather challenging. My text talk also struggled with keeping things straight and thus I had to read the entire book as is, essentially picking all the possible outcomes at once.
As for the story, it was interesting and fun. The MCs consist of a group of friends on an adventure the summer before starting college. They’re on a journey of self discovery as well as an unusual scavenger hunt following clues via a special pack of tarot cards (AMELIA) inherited from her grandmother. The more they discover about the cards the more they learn about themselves. The farther they get on their journey the more dangerous and adventurous things become. In the end I think it wrapped up nicely and left them all in a good place. I’m not exactly sure what message I’m supposed to take from the book but I think that’s also because I have so many of the stories detours alive in my brain and the multiple storylines do sort of blur. I hope the final copy is a lot better organized and easy to read because I think I’d have enjoyed it a lot more if it were not so challenging to read and understand.

Unfortunately this will not download for me. Sorry for the issue. I hope I get to buy this book when it comes out!

Growing up choose your own adventure books got me hooked on reading. I was so excited to be able to read this book and return to reading this style of book.

Out of the four main characters Cleo, Amelia, Logan and Chase I found Cleo to be the most interesting. I enjoyed being able to make choices for the characters and seeing where these choices led.

Overall, I found this to be a very entertaining book and found the tarot cards to be an intriguing.

I have not read a “choose your own adventure,” novel since I was a kid and I remember really enjoying them. I did not really enjoy this book, however.

Throughout the entire book, there was no real struggle. The characters seemed to have all of their issues resolved very quickly with no real hootspah behind any of their actions and it honestly was kind of annoying to read. I found myself counting down the pages I was reading instead of enjoying the story.

The story follows Amelia, Cleo, Chase and Logan. They’re on a road trip before heading off to college and they are using Amelia’s grandmother’s old tarot deck to guide them. They find out that the deck is rare and priceless, honestly something that people will pay millions for, and they are immediately thrown into a dangerous situation: Wanderers are coming for the Deck.

The characters are fun and honestly, individual. The story makes sense and isn’t confusing, which would be good for a younger audience. What concerns me is the characters were so…. OBVIOUSLY different. For instance, Chase and Logan… dating two years, Chase is the nerdy one with his button ups and Logan is the really attractive Trinidadian guy with a hot body, who also happens to be an asshole, just by the way… And of course Chase is insecure every. Single. Time. Another guy looks at Logan… it’s cringey and just made me roll my eyes repeatedly.
Amelia was completely airheaded and unlikeable. Cleo, ever the skeptic, was the only one who seemed to have any semblance of being a full, well-rounded person but it was obvious that they were a side character due to the miss with their pronouns.

I feel like this book would be great for a younger audience, like I said. It’s a simple read, but it moves much too quickly for a contemporary and honestly, isn’t the relaxing read I expect from a contemporary. Targeted to a younger audience, this book would be very successful.

Thank you Netgalley and Running Press Kids for providing me this ARC in exchange of an honest review
The plot: Amelia, Chase, Cleo and Logan are best friends and it's their last summer together before going to college so they decided to take a roadtrip to discover the truth behind the unique tarot deck Amelia's grandma — Flo — gifted her. But, as they start looking for the story behind the deck, they find out that its value (and I'm not talking only about money) is bigger than they could ever imagine.
Soooooo, Major Detours was my first experience with interactive fiction and I think I had too big expectations because of that. But here are some things I liked in the book:
- Even though the story is told by Amelia and Chase's POVs, it's not confusing as might be with other books with multiple POVs. In Major Detours, is easy to know when we're reading Chase's POV and when we're reading Amelia's because they're both really different.
- The diversity! I think that's one of the best things about the book, how it felt so natural and well-written. Specially Cleo. I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!!!!
- The characters actually talked when something was bothering them and I think that's beutiful because every time a character keeps things bottled inside them in a book really annoys me (even though is necessary in some occasions) but it happens quite the opposite 99% of the time in MD.
What I didn't like:
- More than once, I felt that things were happening too fast, it got difficult to keep up and I thought it could be easily fixed if the book was a bit longer?
- Amelia. I managed to like her a bit more in idk the last 3 chapters? but overall I just found her really annoying.
- The biggest part of the book was too predictable. Some of the major plot twists were already expected so it took some joy of the reading, I didn't get too eager to finish it.
I can't talk much about the tarot part of the book because I didn't know anything about it until picking up this book, but (from a very layman's point of view) it was easy to understand the elements that were explored in the book, everything looked well explained.
So, it was a good book, but it could be better! Hoping to read more of Zachary's writing soon.

I have received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

So I think it's safe to state that I've never read a book quite like Major Detours: A Choices Novel. Which is definitely a good thing to say because it was something new, unique and fun to dive into. While getting to know the characters - Amelia, Chase, Cleo and Logan - we also get to play around and make the decisions for them. Or you could just ignore the decision making and just reach each and every page.

I'm just going to say that I decided to play the game. I'll even admit that I did cheat during a certain part because I was really intrigued to see which path would be behind every door option. I was definitely consumed with all those choices and see the consequences for a very good amount of time. I'm honestly not even mad at myself for doing that either because it gave me pure enjoyment.

As for the characters themselves? I liked them. It was a fun little found family group of friends and they had realistic problems. This adventure also brought them closer together and probably helped prepare them for their next adventure - college.

We also meet a ton of side characters from each little adventure. It's safe to assume that I was suspicious with each and every one of them. I'll even say that I wasn't a huge fan of Maggie or Anwar. I'm not even sorry about that either. I did like Lily and her brother though.

Other than that, the magic and tarot cards were pretty interesting throughout the entire book. I don't think I ever found myself bored while reading this but I will admit that I hated seeing the book ending at 89%.. instead of like 99% or 100%. Still enjoyed the heck out of this book and I can't wait for everyone else to dive into this.

🚌 The story 🚌
This was such an interesting experience! I've never tried a choices novel, so I didn't know what to expect. I must say it didn't work too greatly on the Netgalley app, but I'm sure it'll be way better in an actual printed copy. Every time you choose something, you have to go to a certain page, because the choices influence the rest of the story. At first, not a lot actually changed after your choices. This made it less fun to read, because it felt like nothing I chose would actually matter. This changed when the group went to search for the missing cards; from that point onwards your choices would decide if you'd loose or gain a card! I loved that, because it made me really anxious to choose - since it could mean I'd lose a card.

Overall, the story wasn't the most interesting I've ever read, but that's mostly because I normally read fantasy kind of books. The story wasn't boring either - the search was interesting, but I just don't know a lot about tarot cards, so that made it a little less interesting to me. At a certain point in the story (I believe around 80%..?), we had to choose between cards at the Lianist Outlook Center. I really didn't know what to choose most of the time, because I honestly didn't understand the choices. I feel like this story would be better for people who know more about tarot cards, because the amount of information in this chapter really confused me. I had no clue what the different cards meant, and I just chose on the basis of which card sounded nicer to me. This was the only time this happend though, most of the time I liked/understood the choices.

🚌 The characters 🚌
Throughout the story, the point of view changes between Chase and Amelia.
I feel like the characters were all very relatable, and there were many representations (LGBTQ+) in this book, which I really liked! I go into more detail about all of the characters in my Goodreads review (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4042231694).

There were a few times where Cloe was called 'she' by the writer again; if you want to know at which points in the story you accidently did this Zachary Sergi, please contact me :)

🚌 The writing 🚌
The writing took some getting used to, but I'm not too sure why. There were some mistakes in writing; both in the pronouns for Cloe, but also in spelling etc. I have actually bookmarked most of them, so please contact me Sergi if you want to know which ones there are. A very important mistake in the book (or well, not that important, but it definitely is important to me), is at 25%. Aebleskiver is mentioned as an authentic Dutch dessert; but I'm Dutch and I've never heard of it - because it's Danish! Danish and Dutch are two VERY different countries, so you should definitely correct that ;)

There were some very inspiring sayings in this book, and I honestly feel changed after reading it. I'm such a wuss, I know.

🚌 Overall conclusion 🚌
Overall, I feel like this was an interesting story, since the choices did really have an effect on what would happen. I liked how the characters were each so different, and there were so many representations (LGBTQ+), which I loved! I'm really happy with my choices and how everything turned out. I also liked the kind of bonus content at the end, where you could add up your choices into a horoscope for both Amelia and Chase. I thought the search and the different riddles they had to do were very cool (although my choices didn't have a lot of effect on those riddles perse). The story - to me - just wasn't the most interesting I've ever read, but maybe that's because it didn't have as much action as I'm used to. All in all, I do recommend this story, although you might enjoy it more if you know anything about tarot cards!

👍 Loved the choices, such an interesting concept!; great diversity in characters; many inspiring moments in writing; learned some things about tarot cards

👎 Some mistakes in writing/Cloe's pronouns; not a lot of action; might be a bit difficult to understand if you don't know a lot about tarot

I always loved the Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was young and this took me right back to the joy that I felt. A cracking read!!

I grew up loving the choose your own adventure books so when I saw that this was an interactive book, I was so excited! I really enjoyed this book! I plan on going back to get different outcomes but I loved the reader guide included that helped you keep track of your choices!

I unfortunately did not finish this one, but it was more due to the formatting of the ebook than anything to do with the actual story. The format didn't have page numbers, so a choose-your-own-adventure book just doesn't work.

That being said, the actual story was promising. I liked the inclusion of the meanings behind each tarot card. As someone not familiar at all, it was cool to learn about it. The characters were alright as well, nothing special but readable enough.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC

Major Detours is a very unique and innovative YA novel. Their trip is inspired by a very special tarot card deck, which develops into a scavenger hunt. This book in interactive and has several different possible endings, something that instantly grabbed my attention. I want to say that the format that I used didn’t help me like this story better, it just made me so confused! I used the ebook version on the Netgalley shelf app and the pages referenced were all over the place. The book in itself is well written enough, you switch the chapter between two out of the four main characters: Amelia and Chase. To be honest, Chase was fine but as the plot kept progressing I just couldn’t find it in me to make myself like Amelia. she started to get really interesting towards the last leg of their journey, but by then I thought it was a bit too late to turn things completely around. This was a nice book, clearly meant for a different audience though.