This book will draw you in quickly!! I wanted to keep turning the pages quickly so I could find out what would happen next!!

Tanner is 21 years old and has had to drop out of college due to an unfortunate accident that will keep her from returning to the soccer field and her scholarship, Louise is 84 and has taken a fall and her children want someone to move in and provide care and assistance to their mother. Tanner moves in and the pair is trying to figure out how to exist with each other. There are so many funny moments between the 2 of them.

Tanner becomes suspicious of Louise but when Louise says they need to run. Tanner goes with her!! There will be many comical and touching moments that happen during the cross country drive.

There will be a lot of twists and turns that the author does a great job in revealing at the perfect times!!

This is my favorite Colleen Oakley book!! I loved the characters and the story!!

Loved this fun lighthearted story centering around a 21yo injured athlete, Tanner, and an 84yo free spirited lady that has lived to the fullest, Louise. I enjoyed every page of this adventure. It made me laugh out loud and filled my heart. The adventure begins when Louise is recovering from a broken hip and her children hire Tanner to watch after her. We learn that Louise is WAY more interesting that what the surface level portrays and as Tanner learns more about Louise, she learns to loosen up herself, find her true self, and live. The book is unique in presentation in that you get text strings from Louise's children, who are at varying levels of concern for their mother and also interspersed chapters about FBI antics. I so enjoyed the format. The relationship that develops between characters is just delightful. I will be gifting this book to many people, I think it appeals to all readers.

This is the book to read if you are looking for a fun, yet serious story that is full of adventure, spirit, heart, mystery and love! This will be such an easy book for me to recommend because it was just plain delightful.

We get the fun mix of the young Miss Tanner who is devastated that her soccer playing was ended abruptly and against her will, along with Louise, who is well past her prime, but has enough spunk to live life to the fullest. Louise broke her hip and is recuperating, so her children feel that she needs in home help. They hire Tanner to help their aging mother. The two strangers don't get along particularly well at the beginning, but by the end, they are the best of friends. I loved watching their antics, how they helped one another, stood up for each other and spoke truth plainly.

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for the advance e-copy of this book.

After losing her athletic scholarship, Tanner returns to Atlanta and tries to find a way to return to college. She accepts a job to help care for Louise, a sharp-tongued octogenarian recovering from hip surgery. Shortly after Tanner sees a news report about a decades-old jewelry heist with a primary suspect who looks suspiciously like Louise, Louise asks her to drive to California in exchange for enough money so that she can return to college. Will this be a path back to her old life or to jail as a fugitive’s accomplice?

As an homage to the film Thelma and Louise, Colleen Oakley’s novel celebrates female friendship. Complex characters deliver smart narrative and witty dialogue as they navigate a plot with filled with scenic views and unexpected detours. Pack this book for your next road trip!

This is a heartwarming story about two women at very different stages in life who embark on a wild adventure - and help each other along the way. Tanner, a student-athlete, is no longer an athlete or a student after an injury. Louise is getting older and needs help, but she doesn't want to leave her home or live with her children. She also has some secrets from her younger days that her children know nothing about. When Tanner and Louise go missing, her children understandably become concerned. I enjoyed the text message chains between Louise's adult children as they become increasingly worried about their mother. Colleen Oakley has done a fantastic job of creating relatable and unique characters who I found myself rooting for throughout the book.

"The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise" is an excellent novel that I would definitely recommend to anyone who wants to read a heartwarming story about two people who help each other find their way.

If you're not already a Colleen Oakley fan, I highly recommend all four of her other books. She has a talent for creating distinctive characters that stay with you long after you've finished the book.

I received an advance copy of the novel for review from NetGalley, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to read it.

I truly adored this book! It was such much fun to be on the run with this unlikely duo and to see their friendship blossom. Louise is an 84-year-old woman whose family insists that someone move in after she suffered a broken hip. Tanner is a 21-year-old former college soccer athlete who takes the job. When they leave their home on a cross-country journey, I didn't know what to expect and the air of mystery sounding Louise and her past makes this all the more enjoyable! Louise was really the star of the show and I adored reading about an 80-something woman doing her thing and living her life (and flirting with local singles!). She was a total badass and this story was a blast to read.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is the first novel I have read by Colleen Oakley and I adored it!! It was funny, adventurous and filled with a few surprise plot twists. The story is a 21st century version of the wildly popular movie Thelma and Louise and has themes of female relationships, unlikely friendships, a bit of romance, and second chances.

Twenty-one-year-old Tanner Quimby needs a place to live. Preferably one where she can continue sitting around in sweatpants and playing video games nineteen hours a day. Since she has no money, her options are limited, so when an opportunity to work as a live-in caregiver for an elderly woman falls into her lap, she takes it. Thus begins the story of a not-to-be-underestimated elderly woman and an aimless young woman who—if they can outrun the mistakes of their past—might just have the greatest adventure of their lives.

This book was filled with lovable characters to include, Louise, an 80 year old grandmother who in many ways reminded me of my late grandmother, feisty and tell you how it is kind of person who at the end of the day was a kind and caring person who enjoyed helping people.

Read this if you love:
Female friendships
Road trips
Multigenerational characters
Lighthearted stories
Plot twist

I received an electronic advanced reader (eARC) copy from @thoughtsfromapage Patreon Community. Thank you to Cindy Burnett, publisher Berkley and Netgalley. I appreciate the opportunity to preview this book.

This was a sorely-needed break from my doom-scrolling! While I don't typically think of books in terms of their elevator pitches, this charming story could be cast as "Thelma & Louise" meets "Driving Miss Daisy", and, truthfully, that's pretty accurate. The two prickly protagonists seem about as far apart—in age, experience and outlook—as you could imagine, but of course they come together in all of the expected, and sometimes unexpected, thoughtful, ways. The plot moves quickly with some mild tension and does broach some serious topics, but that tension is occasionally relieved with moments of pure delight in this quirky adventure. While I was reading, I couldn't help but think that with some thoughtful casting, this would make a terrific movie. And, like most "road movies," it's the journey, not the destination, that matters. Enjoy the ride.

*Pub date 3/28/23. Thanks to NetGalley, Penguin Random House, and Cindy Burnett at Thoughts from a Page for an advanced e-copy of this book.*

What a fun book! We find Tanner as a 21 year old who had to put her college and career goals on hold after an injury halts her soccer career resulting in losing her scholarship. Friction at home as she recovers results in her being kicked out of her house and into the house of a family friend - 80 year old Louise - as a caregiver. Louise is recovering from an injury as well. The unlikely pair transition from simply tolerating each other to being cordial when a Louise receives a letter that changes everything. A cross-country adventure follows while they may or may not be fleeing from the FBI. The antics and the friendship that develop are humorous and heartwarming as the two discover that you shouldn’t make assumptions about others as there is often much more to them than meets the eye.

I highly recommend this book!

Thank you so much to Berkley for the free book!

I was drawn to this book because of the bright and fun cover and then when I read the synopsis : a college dropout and a 80+ y/o old together on the run from the law, I knew it was right up my alley.

I'm a huge fan of unlikely friendships and Tanner and Louise will show readers that we all have more in common with each other than we originally thought 💓

This is the perfect book to read when you just need to relax and have a good laugh. While the plot was fun and the storyline interesting, there wasn't too much tension for me and I actually appreciated that in this case.

I do feel like there's a whole world of secrets and fun left to be explored with these two so I would LOVE a second book or even a series with these characters!

This was my first book by Colleen Oakley and now I plan to go back and check out all her other work as well! If they're all this much fun, I'll be flying through them!

This book will be available March 28th!

I absolutely adored this book. It was funny, touching, and suspenseful with so many twists and turns I didn't see coming. There was even a hint of romance. But my absolute favorite part was the "slow burn" friendship and bond between Gen Z Tanner and octogenarian Louise. The voice was pitch perfect. I wish I could read it again for the first time.

While it took me a bit to warm up to Tanner I loved this story. There are laughs, suspense, a budding romance, mystery about Louise, family issues - such a heartwarming story. I do hope the author thinks about making this into a movie. Looking forward to more from this author. A really good book club selection.

The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise ia an adorable tale, one which two completely different generations and two different personalities combine and set out on a great adventure, not just in where they go, what they do and the lessons they learn but in getting to know and appreciate one another, two people, if not for their circumstances, would have never had the chance in life to meet and change each others lives, forever.

Louise Wilt is a very old woman (mid-eighties) with some secrets in her life, well, many secrets, BIG secrets, from long ago. In her youth, it seems, she had some wild experiences with some “characters” that were a part of her life. Many of them proved to be quite dangerous, in the end, it turned out, so Louise left this fast and loose life and chose to live one very much like most of the population. She settled down with a man, moved to the suburbs where there was a house she still lives in, her children now grown and her husband now passed. At times, it seems, the only problems she really has are with her children who worry about her all alone in the home, now that their father has gone and she has become infirm with a bad hip, having had it replaced.

The laugh out loud parts for me were when the chapters switch to narrate the conversations Louise’s children have with one another, at times, and other people about their mother, many hilarious things shared and said. Especially when they learn that their mother had a life quite different, in her youth, than the one they expected their mother to have lived. The fact that two of the children paid very little attention to their mother (one knew more than the others), that she had some big items hidden on the property while they were growing up, is very telling of what most people think of their parents. They don’t expect them to have secrets and have no existence apart from the one they had lived with their children.

But, I can’t say that I would not be at fault for this as I too accepted what my family told me about their life, never asked any other questions even when information was left out, and filled in any blanks I might have had with hum-drum experiences that I thought very little about. Colleen Oakley doesn’t just give readers a delightful story to read but also brings to mind the fact that if we were to ask the question of ourselves, “do we really know our parents (or grandparents/ family) that we may be surprised to find out that, in fact, much of what we know we have filled in ourselves and rarely think that a loved one (especially if it happened before we came into the family) had a life filled with any kind of danger, excitement and/or adventure, before us.

Part two of the duo is the young addition of Tanner who cannot go back to Northwestern because she has had a sporting injury and, without her scholarship based on her being able to play, the tuition payments are out of the question. Since she is at home, her parents nag her to get a job, not that the caregiver salary she will make living in the home of Louise Wilt will pay her tuition. Depressed about everything, Tanner is set to move in and help the old lady out and when she isn't doing that, play video games. However, Louise does not like the idea of someone doing things for her and getting too close. In time, readers learn why. But, it is not that Tanner is the one that brings “the heat” on Lousie, that would have happened regardless. For Louise, it is just time to reconcile her past.

When the two move in together the interaction between the two generations make the book even better. Don’t get me wrong, all the characters, on their own, are quite unique and humorous for all their individual traits given. That Louise sets out for a fly fishing trip four days after her husband dies, after all, it had been paid in full and planned for months, that an 80 something year old woman is like that, is original all on its own. And, that Tanner participates in the shenanigans of Louise, when they are discovered, she is discovered, as long as she can extort enough money to pay her tuition at Northwestern for the year and say that, if they are caught, the old woman had kidnapped her, forcing her to go along with whatever illegal thing they are doing, well, let’s just say this young woman doesn't make the best decisions if confronted with the fact that, by doing them, she can get something she desperately wants regardless of the trouble she or they may get into. After all, someone should be the adult here, right?

The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise will touch your heart from the beginning and there will be no doubt that readers are going to want to stay along for the ride. It’s just that the touching moments in the book, so many of them, are born to make readers laugh till they cry. In the end, when I really did cry I didn't know if it was because I was tickled by the whole story and laughing, or touched by it. And you know what, I think it was both.

This was an incredibly moving intergenerational friendship and road trip story between Tanner, a young co-ed who's gotten kicked out of school and Louise, the older woman with Parkinson's she's been hired to help.

Gun-toting Louise is strong-minded though and ambushes Tanner in the middle of the night, coercing her into a cross-country road trip for reasons she won't share. Along the way Tanner comes to really respect Louise (and be mildly terrified of her give no f*cks ways).

I really enjoyed learning about Louise's back story which was incredible and not at all what I was expecting! There was a bit of everything in this book from historical fiction, feminism, jewel heists, you name it! Tanner even finds a bit of romance on the road to round things out!

Great on audio and highly recommended especially for fans of books like Flying solo by Linda Holmes or other intergenerational road trip books like She's up to no good by Sara Goodman Confino or A thousand miles to Graceland by Kristen Mei Chase.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy and @prhaudio for a complimentary ALC in exchange for my honest review!

CW: domestic abuse, kidnapping, gun violence (nothing graphic and all recounted from the past).

THE MOSTLY TRUE STORY OF TANNER AND LOUISE follows the two titular characters. Tanner is a twenty-one year old who had a bright future in sports which was derailed by an accident that ruined all her hopes. She’s bitter and struggling without the ability to get back into school without her athletic scholarship. When her mother tells her it is time to leave the family home she must find a new path.

Louise is an older woman in need of some support getting to appointments and other basics. She and her children can’t afford an actual live in nurse, but Tanner’s need for a place to live and possession of a driver’s license gives them a solution. The pair are an odd pair who don’t immediately hit it off, but there is more to Louise’s past than anyone knows and there’s a road trip needed to shake things up.

This book took me a little bit to get into initially. Neither character immediately made me love them, but I wound up really enjoying the book. Both characters have a great arc that really made me enjoy their stories. There are a lot of secrets that come out as the pair hit the road with no one else the wiser and the police must get involved.

I have really enjoyed all of Colleen Oakley’s books in the past so my expectations were high and I am so glad that this book lived up to my hopes for it! The audiobook for this one was really well done as well! THE MOSTLY TRUE STORY OF TANNER AND LOUISE is out today!

First off this book needs a prequel and a sequel! I’m always a big fan of inter generational friendships and this is no exception. When twenty something Tanner takes a job as a driver/errand runner for eighty-something Louise they both get more than they bargained for. Soon they are on the lam, a journey that turns into one of self discovery for Tanner and self reflection for Louise. As Oakley did in The Invisible Husband of Frick Island, she examines important social issues within the context of an unputdownable, laugh out loud, sitting on the edge of your seat story. This time she tackles domestic violence and living as a woman in today’s society. Some great lines, one of my favorites, while speaking about the way women are raised to protect themselves Louise ponders, “ Sometimes it just feels like we still spend so much time trying to teach the house not to catch on fire, instead of teaching the arsonist not to light it.”

Highly recommend

This was so much fun! I loved this story and the unlikely pairing of a sassy octogenarian and a 21-year-old suffering a bit of a quarter life crisis. Sometimes I think books that feature an extremely odd "friendship" have the potential to be too cheesy, but The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise stayed firmly in the fun and witty category.

I'll be honest and admit that I bumped this up a full star just because I loved Louise so much. She is sassy and crotchety and made me miss my Nana. Louise was really the star of the show and I adore seeing an 80 year old woman do her thing and live her life. She was a total badass and this story was a blast to read.

Sometimes a light and breezy read is just what the doctor ordered. Highly recommend going into this blind and just sitting back and enjoying the ride.

I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book; all opinions are my own. Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley for allowing me to be an early reader.

The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise by Colleen Oakley

Twenty-one-year-old Tanner Quimby needs a place to live. Preferably one where she can continue sitting around in sweatpants and playing video games nineteen hours a day. Since she has no credit or money to speak of, her options are limited, so when an opportunity to work as a live-in caregiver for an elderly woman falls into her lap, she takes it.

One slip on the rug. That’s all it took for Louise Wilt’s daughter to demand that Louise have a full-time nanny living with her. Never mind that she can still walk fine, finish her daily crossword puzzle, and pour the two fingers of vodka she drinks every afternoon. Bottom line: Louise wants a caretaker even less than Tanner wants to be one.

The two start off their living arrangement happily ignoring each other until Tanner starts to notice things—weird things. Like, why does Louise keep her garden shed locked up tighter than a prison? And why is the local news fixated on the suspect of one of the biggest jewelry heists in American history who looks eerily like Louise? And why does Louise suddenly appear in her room, with a packed bag at 1 a.m. insisting that they leave town immediately?

Thus begins the story of a not-to-be-underestimated elderly woman and an aimless young woman who—if they can outrun the mistakes of their past—might just have the greatest adventure of their lives.

A fun story centering around young Tanner, and old Louise. I adore books like this one- fresh and witty and heartwarming.

Out on March 28

Pub date: 3/28/23
Genre: fiction (road trip, protagonists of different ages)
Quick summary: Two very different accidents lead to college-age Tanner becoming a caretaker for senior Louise. But things get a lot more interesting when Louise insists they leave town in her classic car - immediately.

I love books about unlikely friendships, and Louise and Tanner were such a good pair! Louise was hilarious and wise-cracking, while Tanner did a great job playing the voice of reason. I loved Tanner's amateur sleuthing, trying to figure out Louise's secrets - her escapades kept me entertained. I also enjoyed how Louise helped Tanner figure out how to grow up despite her life not meeting her expectations - everyone could benefit from some Louise tough love! The ending of the story worked really well, and this was just a pleasure to read from start to finish.

I read about 50:50 text/audio, and both formats worked well, with a slight edge for the audio because Hillary Huber captured both characters' snark really well. If you enjoy stories about quirky/unusual friendships, definitely pick this one up!

Thank you to Berkley and @thoughtsfromapage podcast for providing an e-ARC and @PRHAudio for providing a complimentary audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Started out to be a fun read with a grumpy old woman and angry 21 year old thrown together out of need. When Louise finds out an old gangster is getting out of prison, she has Tanner drive her California. These two on the lam with FBI trailing them will have readers wondering what will happen next. The story tended to be drawn out with lots of details that were not important. Just an okay story.