This Adventure Ends by Emma Mills

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Content/Trigger Warnings: Bullying, depression, panic/anxiety attacks, death of a parent, grief, underage drinking

“Dreams don’t have to be realistic- that’s why they’re dreams. You have to work to make them happen. Or else they would be…realities”

I think Emma Mills might be a new favorite author! Wow, friends, just wow. This is only the second Emma Mills book that I’ve read and it seems like every book is just a piece of me. Foolish Hearts had so many pieces of me that I hold dear, but this book right here, the things our main character does, wow, hitting close to home with a mirror character.

This Adventure Ends features our main character, Sloane who is raw, complex, and has never had any real friends to call her own. We follow her as she ends up moving from New York to a small town in the southern states. When she attends a party one night, she finds herself sticking up for Gabe Fuller, twin brother to Vera, and best friend of Remy and Aubrey. Suddenly, Sloane is thrown into a world of having friends who have secret codes, broken souls, and spending her Friday nights with them. Without that single moment, this story wouldn’t have been possible.

Sloane has never had friend before and when she’s thrown into this group of broken souls, she never expected that she’d have texting buddies, study partners, and people who like her for her. For the first time, Sloane doesn’t feel so lonely anymore. She finally found a little space among these ride-or-die group of friends. Though she’s still figuring the whole friend out, she can’t imagine her world without them.

“The city pulses on around us, and I’m not sure which one of us is anchoring the others, but I’ve never felt less adrift.”

I love that this book talks about what it means to be lonely for a long time and then suddenly being thrown into a world where you finally feel anchored. This book is very much a love letter to all the lonely people who finally find the friendships they’ve been dreaming of. This book is very much centered around friendships which means we see a lot of loyalty: to friends, to family, the one dear memory. Loyalty plays a huge role in this book especially when Sloane teams up with Remy to track down a lost painting that was one of the last made by Vera and Gabe’s mother, or the moments Sloane has with her father’s fan fic even though she doesn’t understand it or want to, she keeps reading them.

And we have to talk about Frank! Frank is such a whirlwind of a character in this book and I love him for it! He is this character that’s like a sunbeam. You can’t help laughing or getting caught up in everything he does. Plus, that one scene with Sloane and Frank about the first kiss, holy cow, ten out of ten! Fully recommend having that kind of encounter at least once! I also really enjoyed Sloane’s father. He’s just one of those characters that you can’t help liking and you don’t know the reason to. Maybe it’s from showing his struggles so openly, maybe it’s his love of fan fiction, or maybe it was the way he indirectly dedicated characters in his books to the many sides of Sloane. He was just a character I couldn’t help liking.

I really loved Sloane and I really felt connected to her. I mentioned this before, but a lot of the things Sloane does hit really close to home. Standing up for people she doesn’t know, taking her friend to see her girlfriend because she’s really upset, and trying to help rekindle a lost love between friends, Sloane is my whole persona. Sloane loves so fiercely with her loyalty and she just hit really close to home. She made me feel so seen and reading about her was like staring at myself in the mirror, reading my own traits to myself. It was an emotional experience and I’m so grateful for Sloane existing, for this book existing.

“I think about that kind of love as we increase in altitude. How maybe it doesn’t just stand for romance—maybe it works for friendship, too. Maybe there’s a kind of friend love that opens you up… Maybe you didn’t have a place for it within you before, but once it finds you out, crawls inside, and makes space for itself, you can’t live without it ever again.”

Overall, there’s so many amazing themes in this book. From loyalty to discovering love, this book is everything. I think anyone who has found themselves in a friend group where it’s “I would kill someone for you” needs to read this book. I think this is one of the easiest five stars I’ve given. How could I not give this book five stars? It’s another book that has saw my many layers and completely unraveled me, in the best way possible. If you haven’t read any of Emma Mills work yet, do yourself a favor and pick one of her books up.

I read this for The Backlist Readathon 2020 💗