💭Thoughts:
I went on a road-trip with my mom to Graceland eight years ago. We had so much fun! I can still picture all of the hardcore Elvis fans we were surrounded by. Several completely reminded me of Loralynn.

A Thousand Miles to Graceland is a fun, engaging, and thought provoking book. I really enjoyed Grace and her mom. Grace’s mom’s antics were a lot, but made for a good laugh. All of the quirky places they visited and characters they met along the way really added to the story. I found myself really endeared to this mom-daughter duo.

As I read further into the story and discovered why the obsession with Elvis started, I got a bit emotional. I can’t imagine how a tragedy like that would affect a person’s life. This situation really added depth to the story.

The epilogue nearly had me in tears. Everything came together in the end so well! I really enjoyed going on this road-trip of self discovery and forgiveness with Grace and Loralynn!

So heartwarming and full of love!! I really enjoyed the main character’s mother with all her quirks and misguided love. I also loved the growth and healing that the main character went through. Wonderful book!!

It’s not really a rom com but more of a mother daughter story of reconciliation and understanding. About halfway thru I had a feeling of where the story was going, but it didn’t take anything away from it. Reading is personal, and wow this book brought out some things from my family but not in a traumatic way, in a way that helped me think about my relationships with my family.

It well written by balancing the seriousness of family relationships but also hope in relationships changing over time and letting go.

Thanks to the author for putting this out to the world. I also loved how the author explains the mothers obsession with Elvis,… reminds me of how BTS, crafting, little trinkets bring people light and that joy in being lost in something silly and fun.

I was so excited to get my hands on a review copy for this book since I had been following the author @thatkristenagain since her mommy blogger days, love her @coolmompicks , listen to her Spawned podcast and just needed to try the fruits of this newest venture, fiction writing, as well … and I was not disappointed, l loved it !
This was a beautifully written Mother/Daughter story, that spoke to me in so many ways. Grace is an accountant in Boston, stuck in a rut but trudging on, her mother Loralynn is in an retirement community in El Paso. Grace and Loralynn only talk on scheduled occasions and see each other once a year but now Loralynn has a big ask - for her birthday she has a big ask: as a devoted Elvis fan she wants her daughter to take her on a road trip to Graceland.
El Paso to Memphis is quite the road trip and a lot of one on one time for the two of them to reflect on their relationship and their relationship to the abusive husband/father who affected their relationship. They have lost a lot of time but with a renewed sense of urgency the confinement of a road-trip they manage to work on their relationship through emotional and hilarious moments, states of sickness and drunkenness. Elvis, karaoke and psychics add to the entertainment but there was definitely a deeper soul searching vibe to this and I have highlighted passages that I’ll go back to ! This was a winner for me !

Sequined, sparkled and bee hive wig wearing Loralynn Johnson is turning seventy and has always dreamed of visiting Graceland. She plans a road trip from her hometown of El Paso to Memphis and begs her estranged daughter, Grace to take her. Their trip becomes much more to both mother and daughter than either could have hoped for or planned. This fabulous debut novel is well worth the read.

Easy, flowing writing and smart, witty dialogue made the pages fly and I couldn’t put it down. I love great character development and growth in a book, and it’s real, raw and emotional in A Thousand Miles to Graceland. I only wish I could give it more than five stars!

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.
My mother was a huge Elvis fan & after she died I made a trip to Graceland to better understand her love of Elvis.
When I discovered that "A Thousand Miles to Graceland" by Kristen Mei Chase was available to review, I had to request a copy.
It was a wonderful story about the importance of friends, family & one’s own happiness in life.
It was funny & heartfelt.
I would definitely read another book by this author.

A Thousand Miles to Graceland is one of those books you want to share with your mother or mother figure. It's a story about bridging the distance, confronting the things we've never said, and realizing that time always seems to be slipping away. Grace has a complex relationship with her mother, but a road trip to Graceland is the furthest thing she'd ever want to do. Until she finds out she's being divorced and suddenly just wants to get away.

But what starts out as an escape turns out to show Grace that the past never stays in the past. That the things we've never said always have a way of coming out in the end. And that these conversations, even though they're hard and painful and scary, end up being the most worthwhile.

This was an emotional debut that gave me all the feels and had a perfect balance of humor and heart.

A mother-daughter roadtrip story that sees recently separated lawyer Grace taking her mother on the trip of a lifetime for her 70th birthday to visit all sorts of historic Elvis landmarks (in a pink convertible of all things!)

Together these two repair their relationship, deal with past family trauma (alcoholic, abusive father) while sharing some long-held secrets.

Be prepared to cry with this one but also enjoy all the kookiness of Grace’s Elvis-obsesssed mother.

I loved the anxiety rep in this book (Grace) and the way the story deals with familial trauma and terminal illness. There’s even some romance in the form of a childhood friend.

Great on audio and highly recommended for fans of Jesse Q Sutanto, Roselle Lim or Rachel Gibson’s How Lulu lost her mind (another mother-daughter road trip story).

Much thanks to @readforeverpub for a beautiful finished copy!! This is one debut you don’t want to miss and I’m excited to read more from Kristen!

Let’s start the review of Kristen Mei Chase’s debut adult novel with a couple warnings. First, if you want to read A Thousand Miles to Graceland, please give Grace, the protagonist, a chance. I’ll admit I almost quit early on, and a friend did quit because Grace is not the most likable person in the world at the beginning of the book. But, the road trip and the entire book is about Grace’s change, and her confrontation with her past. So, if you can get past the early Grace, you might enjoy it as much as I did. The second is about a trigger warning. It’s not a spoiler to say Grace’s mother has cancer, but this may bother some readers.

A Thousand Miles to Graceland is everything I look for in a road trip novel. The main character changes, grows as a result of the trip and the time spent confronting her past. The epilogue promises a future that is more positive, although there will also be loss. And, there’s humor and tears and surprises along the way. As I said, everything I look for in a road trip novel.

An endearing and sweet novel, this is Kristen’s debut novel, and I absolutely loved it. The novel is a mother-daughter story about a road trip to Graceland to pay homage to Elvis Presley. We meet the main character, Grace, who is a busy professional who has received devastating news that her now-ex husband, Jeff, is in love and wants to move on. She chooses to take a trip with her mother, Loralynn, in a way, to heal and get away from her circumstances. During the journey, she meets Wyatt while keeping in touch with Asha, her best friend.

This one hit home for me was I lost my mom to cancer, and their journey to Graceland became a trip to heal together. The scenes of the hospital reminded me of the uncomfortable trips we took to get my mom treatment. But, also, I remembered unlike the character, Jeff, Mike and my mom created a bond together. They also shared moments of love and warmth.

I also love that books like Kristen don’t have to be about “love” in the sense of how we recognize it popularly but it can be love for one’s self, for our parents, and loved ones. Undoubtedly, Kristen craftily constructs the narrative bringing the readers into the world she creates. Also, by the end of it, I won’t lie that her beautiful and poignant story did make me emotional 🥹. My mom and I did take road trips together. When I was going for my doctoral studies to Canada, we shared driving together and switched every 2 hours. It was our road trip together. The photos that you see are from the trip if you scroll to see the other photos!

I absolutely loved this book. Again, might be my biased having a Chinese mother myself and being biracial Chinese, but this was a beautifully crafted story about mother-daughter relationships and continuing the journey of self-discovery even as an adult. This book, while touches on heavy topics like domestic abuse and loss, is one that feels like it stuck with me- like I want to give more care to the relationships I have with my own mother, even though I know not everyone feels that way. An amazing debut and read.

This was one of my favorite reads in January. An emotional and healing journey of a mother and daughter to fulfill a mother’s dream to visit Graceland.

Grace is newly separated and a little lost in herself when she reluctantly agrees to go on this road trip with her mom. The 2 have had a strained relationship due to many reasons. Grace begins the journey out of duty alone, but ends up finding answers she didn’t realize she was looking for.

This story dealt with several difficult and heavy topics, but balanced it deftly with humor and lightness. You can’t help but absolutely be smitten with Grace’s mom while simultaneously understanding completely where Grace’s frustration with her comes from.

This road trip was a story that I loved and didn’t want to stop reading. I easily recommend this heartfelt and revealing look at a mother’s love and the different shapes it takes. And also how much our past experiences color our future choices.

Pick this one up ASAP! Thank you to @netgalley and @readforeverpub for the ARC to read and review.

Just what I wanted to read. It is a fun travel journey with laughter and tears and a story that I will remember for a very long time. I have read my share of women’s fiction but this one is one of the most interesting ones that I have read in a very long time.

A big-hearted, big-haired story about a mother and daughter crossing the thousand miles between them. A Thousand Miles to Graceland is a book with heart, which often makes up for the occasionally weak writing (there are some truly odd turns of phrase in here), and the fragile relationship between 70-year-old Elvis superfan Loralynn and her daughter Grace, dragged along on this road trip to Elvis's home, is definitely the emotional center of the book. I'm not sure we needed the tenuous romantic interest at all (does he add anything to the story other than an alternative to Grace's soon-to-be ex? Why not just let her be love-interest-less for the span of the story?), and the epilogue, which wraps everything up so tidily and happily, frustrated me after the emotional breakthroughs the characters start to find during their trip. But it's a warm, moving story nevertheless, whether you're an Elvis fan like Loralynn or not.

Content warnings: Abusive parent, parent death, alcoholism, infidelity, anxiety & panic attacks, parent with cancer, child death, hospitalization & medical procedures.

Thanks to Forever for the advance review copy!

A Thousand Miles to Graceland was such a lovely read about a mother and daughter who embark on a road trip together! This was fun, emotional, and heartwarming! This book makes me want to go on a road trip with my mom!!

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre/Tropes: fiction, mother-daughter, road trip, family
CW/TW: alcoholism, domestic abuse (memory), tongue cancer (dad), brain cancer (mom), dead infant from illness (memory)

It’s kind of hard to express my feelings about 𝗔𝗧𝗠𝗧𝗚 . Upon the start it felt like a cute read with a daughter taking her eccentric, Elvis-loving, dresses-like-Pricilla mother to Graceland for her 70th birthday. Grace was unwilling to do it at first because they have a strained relationship. But her with marriage headed towards divorce, it’s a chance for her to get away.

The road trip features stops at tourist attractions or at friends’. It takes an unexpectedly serious turn when Grace’s childhood’s mentioned. I was startled by how casually the physical and mental abuse suffered at the hands of her father were brought up. There was no warning. After adapting to that, the next blow was reading that her mother’s cancer had metastasized to her brain. This one hit me hard, and here I had to put the book down, unsure if I could continue.

Let me emphasize the writing and story are great. It’s the subject matter that gave me pause. But I was too invested in Grace and her mother to give up on the story.

There’s no further big tragedy, though there is a scary incident and a hospital stay involved. (To be a bit spoilery, her mom does make it to the end and is in the epilogue.)

The rest of the trip and what it means to Grace’s mother, and what it does for their relationship is worth the uneasiness I went through in reading this story. I know this might not be the case for everyone, hence the CW/TWs. It’s a touching story, but when you’re ready, and be gentle with yourself when you read it.

Thanks to @netgalley & @readforeverpub for my ARC. This is my honest review. 𝗔𝗧𝗠𝗧𝗚 is out today.

A THOUSAND MILES TO GRACELAND by Kristen Mei Chase was the first book I finished in 2023, and one that I keep thinking about three weeks later. (Thank you @readforeverpub for the #gifted copy).

Though they have a stained relationship, Grace reluctantly agrees to drive her mom, Loralynn, from El Paso, Texas to visit Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee for her seventieth birthday, after Grace's husband asks for a divorce.

I knew going into the book that it was about an estranged mother-daughter relationship and their road trip. I just didn't expect the emotional wallop from the story (see content notes).

I thought the way that Chase told the story was well done. We get flashbacks to Grace's childhood when present day events trigger the memories. That each stop and detour serves a purpose - not just because it's an Elvis related stop.

Chase also shows that the parent-child relationship is complicated. How growing up the child only sees events through one lens, but when given a chance to explain, the parent will tell you a different perspective of the same story.

In addition to Grace's relationship with Loralynn, it's a story of growth. Grace's journey - how growing up as a bi-racial child in a small Texas town with a mother that was singularly focused on Elvis and an abusive father effected her childhood, and how it relates to the choices she's made as an adult.

This book took me on an emotional journey, and I really hope to read more from the author soon.

Content Notes: physical abuse by father (flashbacks), alcoholic parent, death of sibling/child (flashback), cancer (past, and present), seizure that leads to hospitalization, divorce.

Take a trip from El Paso to Graceland with Grace and her mother, Loralynn, for a 70th birthday adventure! The detailed setting of sights and stops along the way felt as I was in the car with them both. With each stop along the way, Grace gains a little more insight into her mother, but will it be enough to repair their relationship? Throughout the story, one common goal is in sight, get to Graceland! The antics, the stories and the great characters kept me turning the pages to see how this story would continue! Thank you NetGalley and Forever for an advanced copy! All thoughts and opinions are my own!

A Thousand Miles to Graceland is a heartwarming and poignant tale of a mother and daughter reconnecting on a road trip to Graceland.

The story also hits upon themes including racial stereotypes and the long-term effects of trauma. The content is heavy, but there are plenty of humorous, lighthearted moments, too.

⚠️ domestic abuse, cancer

A Thousand Miles to Graceland is a good women's fiction read. This story follows Grace and her mother Loralynn on a road trip from El Paso, Texas to Graceland (Memphis, Tennessee). While this story does involve some Elvis, it is more of a story about discovery and learning about yourself and overcoming the past. Despite the heavy topics discussed in this novel (cancer, death, abusive father), this was a good read with some tears shed.