Cute and quirky, like Nothing to See Here which I loved, but not quite as good as that one. I loved the characters, their bond, and their quest.

Kevin Wilson does it again, with all the strange charm and emotional heft I’ve come to love in his novels about messy, complicated families. Run for the Hills might be his most literal take on the “found family” trope: a cross-country PT Cruiser road trip to track down surprise half-siblings and confront the deadbeat dad who ghosted all of them, reinventing himself one family at a time.

The characters are classic Kevin Wilson: quirky, endearing, and unexpectedly profound. Watching these near-strangers turn into a family is the emotional heartbeat of the story.

It’s smart, weird, deeply human, and one of the rare books I rated 5 stars. Add it to your TBR! I cannot type this loudly enough. I LOVE KEVIN WILSON! (Please excuse my shouting.)

Thank you to @netgalley and @eccobooks for the advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

heartfelt and honest story about the messiness of family and the urge to protect the people you care about. It’s got that mix of humor and emotion Wilson does so welL.

Kevin Wilson has given us a book about 4 dysfunctional families connected by the same father. This quirky, light hearted book focuses on his four children who come together in search of their father. They have questions of him that they want answered.
Charles Hill has started and abandoned 4 loving families. Each family was dramatically different however each child he left behind was equally devastated. He was a wonderful father when he was present. Charles/Chuck/Chip has been an author, farmer, basketball coach, independent filmmaker and caretaker. His impression was so strong on his children that each of them has successfully followed in the footsteps of the father they knew.
The premise of this runaway father and his determined children was entirely unexpected. Imagine four strangers, with an over 30 year age difference, agreeing to travel across the country in search of a man who clearly wants no contact with them. It is a pretty tall order especially when one of them is a ten year old boy.
Their father has inflicted the same damage upon all of them and they share the same anger and hurt. However it is tender as the relationships build between the Hill siblings. The four learn to trust and even love one another. Mad, a true loner, becomes the glue that holds them together. Tom, the child, becomes a driving force while Rube acts childlike.
This is another coming of age story but while it was a fun read it unfortunately seemed to lack spark. Wilson left a lot on the table with his characters. What happened to Mad and her solitary farmer’s existence? Did Pep get the big offer after her amazing game? Why throw the curve in about Tom and do nothing with it? I felt the ending wrapped up too quickly with little resolution. I give it a 3.5

I would like to thank NetGalley and Ecco for an ARC of this book. These opinions are my own.

Tennessee author Kevin Wilson takes readers on a road trip with siblings to reunite with the father who left each of them. Rube, a mystery writer from Boston, hires an investigator to find his father who had various name changes, but kept the surname Hill. Rube learns he has a half-sister living in Coalfield, TN. Unannounced, Rube shows up at Madeline's rural TN farm and convinces her to travel to California to find their father. From there, the pair travel to Oklahoma University to meet their sister, Pep, who is an NCAA basketball star. The fourth stop is in Utah, to pick up Tom, an eleven-year-old, In their rented PT cruiser the four Hill unveil their stories of their father. As in any cross-country car ride, each passenger has his or her own thoughts that are interwoven with the plot details. Recommended for fans of road trip novels.

Kevin Wilson is back with another fun and quirky story!
This one is about four half siblings, previously unknown to each other …set off on a road trip across America,
in a PT Cruiser.. to find the father that abandoned them.
Filled with heart and humor, a really good story.
I will read anything this author writes!

Thank you to Netgalley and Ecco for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I was interested in the premise - long lost siblings tracking down their dead beat dad who abandoned them all. But nothing ever truly became interesting to me throughout this story. The characters were somewhat flat, there is no driving action other than their journey, and the end was very anticlimactic. That said, I didn’t dislike the reading experience. It was just fine. In the end I wasn’t very excited about it.

There's something magical in Wilson's ability to tell a story. His characters are a little bit off, but they are so lovable, so real and so memorable. He then takes these characters and puts them in interesting situations. The dialogue is memorable, jumps off the page and fills you with joy even during a tragic scene.

I love reading his novels and Run for the Hills is one of my favorites. I loved all the characters in this story, especially Mad and Rube. The yearning for belonging and family and finding a sense of grounding is at the root of this beautiful story.

And of course life is never what we want it to be, it's always both less and more. As in all his novels, Wilson makes you fall in love with his characters.

with gratitude to netgalley and Ecco for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

Kevin Wilson can write a great book that will have you laughing but also reveals a part of the human condition that resonates with me. This is a straightforward road trip book about half siblings discovering they’re related through their father. Each has been damaged by their father and that loss is revealed in different ways. I loved the characters, the plot chugged along at a nice pace, and the bond they created felt genuine and earned.

Such a wonderful read! Honestly I love the humor and heart and felt like it was the perfect blend of both. I liked the stories of the siblings and the weaving together in the end, it was really well written and heartfelt.

My first Kevin Wilson book was Nothing to See Here which I thought was terrific. This is another family story with unusual circumstances and just as wonderful.

Mad and her mother run the family farm in Tennessee. Mad's father left a note and fled town some 20 years ago with no further contact. But the women do a fine job of surviving and thriving without him although Mad has a lot of questions. Then one day Rube shows up on their doorstep. It turns out that Mad's father is also his dad -- same scenario. He hung around for 10 years or so (before Mad) and was a good father but then one day just left and never was heard from except for a goodbye note. Rube has hired a detective and discovered there are two more abandoned families and also that their father might be in California.

So, Rube proposes the ultimate road trip. His plan is to stop along the way and collect the four siblings, each ten years apart, and go to find their father and confront him. As awkward as it is, he does persuade everyone to accompany him and they make it to the coast.

The four bond, and help fill in the gaps left by their father's departure. There are adventures along the way. They each have a residual sadness in their life from his disappearance but this is not a melancholy book. Somehow the four have managed to emerge as thoughtful, competent mostly functional people despite their childhood lacking a dad.

An excellent read, with endearing characters and some unexpected events. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

This book was fantastic!

Kevin Wilson’s characters really jump off the page and the familial relationships are so rich and complex. The story was plotted brilliantly and the language is beautiful. Even though the chapters were long, the story flowed nicely.

I can’t adequately describe how brilliant Wilson is with language in this story; it is somehow funny, poignant, painful, and achingly beautiful at once.

I would recommend this to readers who enjoy readable literary fiction, touching family sagas, road trip quests, and relationship stories. Readers of these other authors might also enjoy this: Katherine Center, Kiley Reid, and Shelby Van Pelt.

I received this book in exchange for an honest review from Netgalley. I have really enjoyed Kevin Wilson’s work in the past, so I was excited to read this one. It was a little less quirky and weird, while still being offbeat. I liked that the premise was different, but there was something missing to really make it stand out for me. I was missing the deeper point or meaning or takeaway - for a book that seeks to be about family and abandonment, it was lacking the depth I needed.

Run for the Hills is pure delight! Kevin Wilson to put the fun in dysfunctional family here. Like his prior works, Run for the Hills features an eclectic cast of lovable and endearing characters written in his signature whip-smart wit. I love how Wilson captures small-town USA in his works and in Run for the Hills, he perfectly captures this in the sibling's road trip.

Run for the Hills is a humourous and at times emotional story that overall was an instant mood boost. The book also solidified why Kevin remains one of my favorite authors. This is my fifth book by him and proof that he truly does not write a bad book!

Kevin Wilson writes quirky stories with quirky, lovable characters. This book is about four half-siblings finding each other on their mad quest to confront the father that left each of them behind. The scenario is outlandish, but it worked, and by the end of it, I am so glad the siblings found each other, and can envision a future for them, as a family.

I found this book similarly enjoyable to Nothing to See Here. Half-siblings, who were unaware of each other's existence, meet on a road trip to find their father. He finds a new family every 10 years. Wilson creates vivid characters, although the nicknames - Rube, Pep, Mad - seemed a little on the nose. He writes pleasant, humorous novels. I should read the short stories too.

I forgot how much I love this author’s writing. Well, I didn’t forget, I just needed to read his latest and was instantly reminded how quirky his characters are and how wildly imaginative and off-beat the plot while at the same time a tender story unfolds.

Unbeknownst to Madeline who thought she was a single child, turns out her father, who is not the man she knew, has left behind others, whom she will come to know when she embarks on a road trip with Reuben, who claims to be her half-brother.

In these pages, it’s not just an adventure or discovery of family, it’s an exploration of the power of intense emotions, acknowledging the pain and accompanying feelings, and how it shaped who they became. What Wilson does so well is take ordinary words and turn them into something extraordinary, leaving this reader tickled. Somehow a character can go from staring at a stranger to an “afternoon weirdo.” Equally touching is discovering newfound love so profound it can cause an aching vulnerability, which leads to a better understanding of how people cope or perhaps don’t. This and more are what Madeline and Reuben contemplate as they embark on a discovery to find their father and other siblings, while the magical sense of pride they feel meeting another person related by blood, leaves them in utter awe and equally dumbfounded by their father’s absence.

Heart-filling and equally heart-piercing. My kind of story.

I'm a big Kevin Wilson fan, and this one didn't disappoint (though it wasn't *quite* as good as others). I absolutely loved the premise, and the characters were all written in a way that was relatable but endowed with endearing quirks. The pacing of the novel was excellent (sometimes challenging in road trip novels, I think) and I appreciated the uniqueness of the stops along the way. The found family trope was well-executed and I think all the characters showed interesting development that made sense given what was happening to them. All in all, an enjoyable read with just the right about of heart-tugging without veering into the overly-sweet.

Written with heaping doses of heart and humor, RUN FOR THE HILLS is a story about forging relationships where you least expect and redefining what it means to have found family.

This book was so delightful! When I did my ancestry DNA testing, I discovered two brothers I didn't know about, so this hit close to home for me. We haven't gone on a road trip but I totally would!

Wilson does a great job of tucking humurous moments in amoung heavy subject matter. This story was an emotional roller coaster and I had trouble putting it down because I was so invested in what happened next.

All of the characters are intersting and individual. I was rooting for all of them.

Highly recommend.