The Meeting Point by Olivia Lara

What if the Lift driver who finds your cheating boyfriend’s phone holds the directions to true love? 

‘Who are you and why do you have my boyfriend’s phone?’ 

‘He left it in my car. You must be the blonde in the red dress? I’m the Lift driver who dropped you two off earlier.’ 

And with these words, the life of the brunette and t-shirt wearing Maya Maas is turned upside down. Having planned to surprise her boyfriend, she finds herself single and stranded in an unknown city on her birthday.

So when the mystery driver rescues Maya with the suggestion that she cheers herself up at a nearby beach town, she jumps at the chance to get things back on track. She wasn’t expecting a personalised itinerary or the easy companionship that comes from opening up to a stranger via text, let alone the possibility it might grow into something more…

First off thank you too @The_WriteReads/@WriteReadsTours and the publisher Aria Fiction for this review copy, and allowing me to be on this tour. 

After Maya is fired from her journalism job, she flies out to San Fran to surprise her boyfriend David, but she finds out that he’s cheating on her from a text conversations with the lift driver who dropped him and the other woman off and left his phone on the car.

Maya is now alone in a city that she doesn’t know, she jumps at the driver’s suggestion to visit Carmel-by-the-sea. He acts as a tour guide through text messages, and they get to know each other throughout the day. She then wonders if she’ll ever get to meet this driver and see what happens after this little exchange. 

To say I loved this book is an understatement, it’s so fun and easy to read, just a very cute little romance, that I read in one sitting, I think it only took me a couple of hours. I was completely drawn in and just needed to know what happened. I will say that I did sort of guess the outcome, but that took nothing away from the story. 

The writing was great and closed so easily, and the setting and imagery was fantastic, I had to go and look up Carmel-by-the-sea, and it is stunning to say the least and even so similar to how I was picturing it, I love that in a book! 

The story was so lovely, after some hurt and her world sort of falling apart Maya just takes off to find her own happiness, I definitely admired that, there’s no way I could just up and move to a random place I’ve been once beside, no matter how beautiful it was! 

The story was a bit like a fairytale, everything just sort of fell into place for Maya, but I wasn’t mad about that, it just made for a really lovely, happy read, with a big of added humour too, it wasn’t just all cuteness and love, promise! 

I know a lot of people really don’t like instalove stories, I will admit I’m not a fan as they really can come across as unrealistic, but there was just something about this one that I really liked. 

I loved the premise of the book being about a book, and her quest to find this mystery man within the book. Like I said, I did sort of guess the outcome, it’s one of those kind of obvious storylines, but it really didn’t take anything away, it just made for a really nice lighthearted read that I could just sort of lose myself in. 

The characters were great too, Maya was eventually strong minded and independent and really went for what she wanted, she’s on such a journey of self-discovery and is really finding out who she is and what she wants in her life.. 

I really loved her friendship with Celine and how that grows from one day working at the cafe to almost instant best friends, which in my head is pretty realistic at times and I loved the added friendship of Ethan, making them a sort of little trio of friends. 

And of course the relationship between Maya and Ethan, I loved the fact that they were both writers too and already had that in common, they went through quite a journey throughout the story, and I loved how it ended for them. 

David’s character was awful, and Maya’s old boss, there’s always those characters that are super annoying and the author wrote these ones so well. 

The whole mystery of ‘Max’ was quite sweet, this author keeping the identity of his friend a secret to protect him and make sure the girl had the right intentions… there were a few possibility for Max, but I knew all along who he’d turn out to be, I’m just surprised Maya herself couldn’t work this out sooner. 

There were so many sweet little moments that were all beautifully written that just made me smile all the way through. The chemistry, sweet gestures and romance really do bring a lot of ‘Aww’ moments to the story. 

If you usually like these type of books or if you are just in the mood for a light, fluffy, instalove contemporary romance, I’d definitely recommend this one, it was a cute and fun read!