Highway Blue by Ailsa McFarlane is a very highly recommended atmospheric but brief debut novel.

Anne Marie, 21, has been living in the town of San Padua since her husband, Cal left her two years ago after exactly one year of marriage. Since he left she has been struggling to get by, just surviving and trying to forget. When Cal suddenly shows up and asks her out for a drink, she agrees, but soon it becomes clear that he is in trouble and wants help from her. A violent encounter after this sends the two on the run together, escaping San Padua, but with no clear idea of their destination or what awaits them.

This is written as a classic road trip novel and almost feels like it is set years ago as the two flee by hitchhiking down the coast. Described as a story of love and of being lost and found, the novel has more of a dreamlike quality to it. It doesn't feel like it is occurring in the present day world. It feels like it is set much earlier, maybe in the sixties or seventies, with the exception of a few current technological advancements mentioned. The novel is, however, carefully crafted and the quality of the writing shows promise for future works. As Anne Marie recalls and explores her memories of her relationship with her mother, we can see a glimmer of where her problems may have began, but it feels like McFarlane holds back information, leaving the reader wanting more.

The writing itself is descriptive and sets the whole tone of Highway Blue. The characters are both well written and will produce sympathy in readers. They also both seem to be powerless in the face of their situation, as if the only way to take control is to run away. Anne Marie and Cal seem like lost souls who need to find their footing. The narrative is told through Anne Marie's voice and impressions. We know that she has changed since Cal left as he often mentions it and she knows it, she also, to some extent, tries to be the young woman he married. McFarlane is a new writer to watch.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Penguin Random House in exchange for my honest opinion.
The review will be submitted for publication on Amazon, Google Books, and Barnes & Noble.

This book lacked a pulse. The plot seemed to meander despite the intriguing blurb, the characters were one-dimensional, and the ending only gave the guise of a resolution.

This is a quick and voyeuristic look into a few days in a young girl’s life; a girl with no roots, no baggage (literally and figuratively), and absolutely no expectations of life. I realize this sounds sad, but it’s a very realistic peek into the average young person’s life who finds themselves out on their own with nothing of any substance.
Anne Marie is surviving, not living, but simply surviving day to day. Her wayward husband suddenly appears again after a two-year absence, and immediately they're thrust into a violent situation. On the run, they attempt some semblance of a relationship and shared life, but it fails miserably.
The lifestyle of Anne Marie is one I’m not familiar with, but sadly a large population of people live like this day to day. No hopes, no plans, no idea where the next meal is coming from, no concern for basic needs, no expectations. The only basic human need Anne Marie expressed was the desire to take a shower. She was aware that she and her husband had body odor. Other than this one basic desire, she is simply surviving.
This is a quick and sad read, a voyeuristic look into a snippet of how others may live, a sad commentary of human needs and desires. This doesn’t sound like an interesting subject to read, but thanks to the beautiful writing and imagery, it is captivating. It echoes “Thelma and Louise” to me, sad but stunning.
Sincere thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. The publishing date was May 18, 2021.

highway blue is a vivid yet surreal road novel. we follow anne marie and her estranged husband, cal, after an unexpected violent death forces them to head out on a delirious journey.

they travel an unidentifiable landscape in the southwest US. it seems to be the southern california coast, but perhaps it's better that we don't know for sure. and although there are a few brief references to modern technology, the whole book seems to take place in an atmosphere of timeless highway.

the gritty, summer-hot vibes and the ever-shifting coastal scenery are the most notable things about this novel. despite being a story about two people on the lam, not much happens in highway blue. we spend most of the book in anne marie's mind as she watches the scenery streaming past, reflects on her relationship with cal, thinks about the mother she lost when she was fifteen, and observes other people living their odd little lives around her.

this rambling stream-of-consciousness style is definitely not for everyone. there are many long passages like this:

"There was a little pebbled rest area in the woods for the logging trucks and it was edged with long wild grasses which gave way to the dark of the pine trees. We were ringed by them. Up above us was an oval of night sky full of stars and dark quick-moving clouds and wind moving the black treetops at its edge.

"I got out of the car and walked to the edge of the trees and there was the smell of pine, sharp, and the wet smells of soil and moss on the breeze.

"I had left my shoes in the footwell of the car and my feet were bare. Between tufts of grass there were pieces of gravel and they dug into the soles of my feet and the pain seemed to heighten the night and sharpen it and it felt good."

it's melancholic and beautiful, although page after page of landscape imagery can become tiresome. but for the most part i enjoyed being swept into the arid setting, which is richly detailed and atmospheric; so i enjoyed highway blue.

i also appreciate the theme song which often plays through anne marie's mind: this grateful dead track. she says it's her namesake, and the vibe is very fitting.

i'd recommend highway blue if you want a short, dreamy, and quietly introspective read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hogarth Press for providing me with a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel received in exchange for an honest review.
Expected publication date: May 18, 2021
Alisa McFarlane’s debut novel, “Highway Blue”, is a setting-driven, coming-of-age, road trip story set amongst the backdrop of California, with an honest and powerful protagonist.
Anne Marie is trying to start her life over after her husband left her, less than a year into their union. Dog walking and waitressing is paying the bills until one day, her husband, Cal shows up and Anne Marie’s life is completely turned upside down. After an altercation with a drug dealer, a gun goes off and soon both Cal and Anne Marie are on the run from the police. As the two are forced together on a state-wide road trip, they must come to terms not only with their broken relationship, but also with themselves.
The story is narrated by Anne Marie, and McFarlane does a wonderful job of bringing the voice of Anne Marie to life. Normally, a story that is short on commas and long on sentences would turn me off, but in this case it actually helped hear Anne Marie’s voice in my head. Young, naïve, and under-educated, Anne Marie is telling the story in her own words, and we are able to see the world through her eyes.
As mentioned, the story is very heavily reliant on the setting. McFarlane uses beautifully poetic adjectives to describe the California landscape, as Cal and Anne Marie make their way across the state. After the first dramatic scene, nothing extraordinary happens, but I was still invested enough in Anne Marie’s story to want to know how it ends.
Anne Marie’s bravery comes out in full force in the end of the novel, and I emphatically cheered for her. I felt as if I had been through Anne Marie’s transition with her, and the ending brought so much satisfaction and closure.
McFarlane’s debut will make waves when it hits shelves in May. Beautifully written, poetic and emotional, “Highway Blue” will push McFarlane into full-fledged “author” status.

Highway Blue is a short novel of under 200 pages. Alisa McFarlane offers readers a moment in time in the life of her characters, two lost and lonely young adults whose lives intersect in a moment in time.

Twenty-year-old Anne Marie is going through the motions of life, living with strangers, work at a bar and dog walking giving her just enough money to survive, still hurt by the disappearance of her husband after a year of marriage. Now he suddenly has returned, hoping Anne Marie can save him, but she has nothing to give him.

But when a man attacks them and ends up dead, Cal convinces Anne Marie to run and over the next days she remembers her past and contemplates Cal's place in her future.

They are helped by strangers along the way, a happy couple and a lonely trucker. Cal tells Anne Marie that he had hoped their marriage would give him a place to belong in this world. She had loved him. He loved the idea of them.

Heavy on dialogue and Anne Marie's inner thoughts, the story is about romantic ideals and disillusion, the limits of love, and the strength to recreate oneself.

I received a free galley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

I was lucky enough to win an electronic ARC of HIGHWAY BLUE by Ailsa McFarlane in a Shelf Awareness giveaway. Thank you for the early look, and stay safe!

I was given a copy of this book by the publisher to read and review.

I'll be honest, if this book wasn't so short, I would not have finished it. It was VERY short, about a 2 hour read.

I can absolutely see people enjoying this book. I was not one of those people. The writer's prose came off as pretentious to me. Hey look! I'm going to write paragraphs that are massive run-on sentences and I'm going to put the word 'and' instead of using a period and it will be really cool and it will end up being really annoying to me and it was just too much and hence my dislike.

Another thing that I didn't like about this book was that there was no storytelling. The author dumps us into the life and mind of the main character and didn't create enough story to keep me interested. We basically jump into her life for a couple of weeks and then jump back out of it. There was nothing to help me identify or empathize with the characters.

This short little book could've been something great, if were not for the choppy and disjointed writing. I'm very picky when it comes to a certain writing style so this may not affect everyone's opinion of "Highway Blue". I had a difficult time getting into the story because of all the clipped sentences. The main plot I found to be intriguing, but in the end very underwhelming and lackluster.

I really wanted to like this book but it just didn’t happen for me. I found it to be boring and extremely depressing to read. The main character is Anne Marie who is merely existing until her husband returns and a tragedy occurs. This was the only excitement in the entire book. The rest of the story focuses on Anne Marie as she looks back over her past.

3.5 stars raised to 4. Anne Marie is a young woman with little future. She had been married, at 18, to Cal who left her not long after. Cal is a gambler and basically a looser who comes back into her life. After he admits to owing some ne’er-do-wells over $17,000 dollars an armed man comes up to them and demands their money and valuables. They fight and he is shot by his own gun. Anne Marie and Cal run. The novel is the story of this journey written through Anne Marie’s eyes. It is well written and will hold the reader’s attention. Thanks to Net Galley and Random House for an ARC for an honest review.

McFarlane delivers with strong writing and characters with enough intrigue to grasp your attention.

Anne Marie deals with her past and her present with a slow unraveling capturing your attention. Her ties with Cal are explained and severed in a swift concise swipe.

Small thriller aspect leaves you looking over your shoulder while other personal aspects of their lives are divulged.

I look forward to more from this competent author. Clearly she masters words with ease and demonstrates strong characterization shrouded with a dose of enigma leaving you wanting for more with precision closure matched with a solid ending.

Impressive debut all around.

Anne Marie was married to Cal for one whole year before she awoke one morning to find him gone from her side. Two years later and he reappears. Her life has altered little on the outside, but she is much changed on the inside. She isn't the same care-free girl he married but must channel the aspects of the person Cal fell in love with, in order to acclimatise to the chaos that becomes their new, forced reality after a tragedy occurs and sees them fleeing for their freedom and their lives.

This book was an interesting blend of being somehow both peaceful and chaotic at the same time. I think this may stem from the protagonist, Anne Marie's, somewhat accepting and docile nature, despite the turmoil and tumult surrounding her. She is far from mellow, however, and her struggles become more apparent as the duo journey further, together.

The writing mirrored these aspects of the story's central character, as it remained both sparse and yet exuberant, at the same time, ensuring I appreciated all aspects of this emotional short novel.

“Cal had his quick talking and humor and sudden shift between warmth and harshness, and the flash of a sharp twisted smile. He called me beautiful and his skin tasted of the hot salt of a sweat. I was caught, I was caught in all of it and floating in happy looseness, and for the first time in my life I didn’t feel like I was suffocating”.

Anne Marie moved in with Cal at age 19, after only knowing him for three weeks.
Cal left Anne Marie a year after they were married, a year to the day.
Two years later, the absentee materialized in front of Anne-Marie’s apartment.
Cal needed money ( of course)....
Anne-Marie didn’t have money and says she wouldn’t have given him any, if she did, (I wasn’t so sure) —

As even the blurb tells us....
“a gun goes off in a violent accident, hurling the two of them on the road in escape”.

This is a short 192 page debut.
The characters are streetwise, and I enjoyed the comfortable informal writing style.

“Highway Blue” is thoughtfully crafted....depictions good...
and Ailsa McFarlane did a great job.
Not a Pulitzer Prize contender,
but ... it was an engaging story.

I think most readers would like it. Quick read, mystery-suspense - a tone of sadness... mixed with sparkly
heartfelt finesse.

3.7 rating

This book is different. Well written, full of great imagery...My only complaint was that it ended too quickly....McFarlane is a very talented writer and I look forward to reading more of her work.

We meet Anne Marie in the seaside town she's carved something of an existence, or as she puts it, "...made a little life" for herself, when her long missing husband Cal shows up and sets her on a different path. They'd only been married for a short while several years before, and it seems they never shared much of a connection, only that they were young, hot and bored. Also, she'd not had much of a connection to anyone all through her life, her relationship with her mother only intermittently affectionate. The prose is stark, but stunning: ("Together we walked through old rooms full of red and dark._... ".all you could hear was the occasional muffled fug of laughter and it sounded like interference." ). We experience their flight solely through Anne Marie's impressions, her reactions to sharp odors and light of day. Ailsa McFarlane is cagey about location, but various descriptors tend to set this for me on the East Coast, but its haunted, visceral quality could settle it elsewhere. To sum up, Highway Blue is a good example of why I love reading debut novels. There is such promise on display, and I look forward to following this young author's journey.

I was given an opportunity by the publisher to read and review this book.

It is very different from a lot of my normal reads.

I'm not sure if I really enjoyed it or not. That being said, the writing was very well done.

I found the main character, Anne Marie, to just kind of be existing and not really living. She seems to be quite anxious with buzzing going on in her head frequently.

Her husband just leaves her one day and never comes back and then all of a sudden after two years shows back up.

An incident occurs and they end up on the run together. They meet some interesting people on their travels and I think it gives Anne Marie a lot of time for introspection.

She spends a lot of time thinking about her past before her husband and her time with him.

It saddened me because she seemed to not have much hope for love in her life.

I was glad she made the decisions she did at the end.

A figurative Bonnie and Clyde, a more tortured Romeo and Juliet...This book invokes tragedy, angst, and soulfulness of love gone wrong. The characters are hypnotizing and the scenery ubiquitous. This is going to be one of the best books of the year.

A tough and blunt noir with a road trip. Off putting and visceral. A hardened young woman living in squalor has her life upended when her ex-boyfriend comes into her life asking for money. Pretty grim and bleak but well-written.