The Guilt Trip by Sandie Jones
Book Overview:
The Guilt Trip by Sandie Jones explores the friendship dynamic of Rachel and Noah two lifelong best friends who formed a tight-knit friendship group after marrying their spouses Jack and Paige. They’re en route to Portugal for the destination wedding of Jake’s brother Will and his fiancé Allie. But tensions begin to flare at the airport as Jake becomes increasingly frustrated with Allie and her irresponsible actions. This causes Rachel to begin questioning why Jake is extending so much anger towards Allie.
Rachel believes that after the wedding things will level out and go back to normal. Unfortunately, tensions rise after they arrive at their lodging in Portugal and Rachel begins to suspect that Allie is having an affair with her husband Jake. She begins to struggle with these suspicions contemplating whether or not to confront them.
In addition to the suspicions of infidelity, Rachel must come to terms with her past actions and decisions and how they impacted her friendship with Noah. As the weekend progresses, the revelation of hidden secrets and longstanding betrayals threatens to destroy the friend group.
Book Review:
I’m not going to mince words this book didn’t work for me at all. So, much of this novel focuses on miscommunication between Rachel, Allie, and Jack and it is nauseating. I swear this plot point was beaten to death because what woman is going to allow another woman she suspects of having an affair with his brother’s fiancé not to let him know? Like why would she not say anything for the sake of the wedding? I really couldn’t wrap my brain around this line of thinking.
Let’s start with the first issue, Rachel struggling to find out why her husband doesn’t like Allie and him sharing a confession about her supposedly cheating on Will and this was why Jake didn’t like her. I call bull because again why would you allow your brother to marry such a person? I mean if you cared about them the way he said he did. So that’s a little suspect to me.
Then there’s Rachel’s suspicions about Allie and her refusal to nip it all in the bud from the get-go. Again the decision to let a sham of a marriage continue to not rock the boat was used as an excuse to not confront Allie and Jack.
The wedding reception is where tensions mount and increase. Rachel and Noah have a conversation where he’s discussing his suspicions and feelings for Rachel. Allie overhears and Rachel becomes terrified that she’s going to tell Jack and make things more difficult for them. Again instead of confronting the issue head on she blows it up to exponential proportions in her brain.
Then there was the conclusion of events at the wedding where we’re thrown a plot twist that was as obvious as the nose on your face. Well obvious to the reader but not Rachel. The remaining events that transpired were a hodge podge of hot mess to up the ante and create a dramatic conclusion.
While the premise of this story was interesting the execution was terrible. The characters were awful and I didn’t care the least little bit about Rachel’s conundrum because she handled everything so poorly. She was perhaps the weakest character in this story and lacked so much depth and believability. The twists and reveals in this story were so overly dramatized for what they were especially the subplot concerning Rachel and Noah’s history. Nothing came of this subplot so why it was introduced in the first place? I don’t know.
We don’t get a satisfactory resolution where Rachel is vindicated she just has some sort of silent epiphany before all hell breaks loose. Which makes the ending hollow and nonsensical. What was the purpose of it all? This book was absolutely a miss for me and I don’t recommend it at all. 
