The Meeting Point
By Olivia Lara

The Meeting Point, newly published, is a book within a book in some respects and is great for romantics and those who love cafes.

Blurb

What if the Lift driver who finds your cheating boyfriend’s phone holds the directions to true love?

‘Who are you and why do you have my boyfriend’s phone?’

‘He left it in my car. You must be the blonde in the red dress? I’m the Lift driver who dropped you two off earlier.’

And with these words, the life of the brunette and t-shirt wearing Maya Maas is turned upside down. Having planned to surprise her boyfriend, she finds herself single and stranded in an unknown city on her birthday.

So when the mystery driver rescues Maya with the suggestion that she cheers herself up at a nearby beach town, she jumps at the chance to get things back on track. She wasn’t expecting a personalised itinerary or the easy companionship that comes from opening up to a stranger via text, let alone the possibility it might grow into something more…

Review

The book has such an intriguing beginning. It instantly pulls you into the imagination of Maya Mass and instantly you’ve jumped into the imagination of Maya Mass, who is creating a story. The Meeting Point begins as a story within a story. It instantly draws you in because it is written, especially at the beginning, like you’re watching something unfold on a screen or like a trailer for a movie on the first page. Then you get to know who Maya Mass actually is. There is the impression she relies on her imagination to get through life and because there is an element of lonliness and some hard times, so she creates characters and their lives inside her head and scribbles them down as readers are again pulled into her imaginative worlds, as well as her own life. Soon Maya’s life turns into something as strange and interesting as her imagination. It all starts with the opening of a text from someone not know and all becomes like amazing serendipity as it really opens up her life and brings some real colour as she begins to also live again outside her imagination too, not that she loses that of course. Just all seems to fit more together in a healthier way. Not, of course that it is as simple as that. 

The book whisks readers to a whole year later and Maya isn’t at all happy and makes you wonder how come and it shows that even in a romance, such as this, the whimsical warmth of the possibility of romance, a job, isn’t all perfect. There are also the stresses of relationships and how the emotions can feel so complicated with romance and what to feel about the former boyfriend and a new guy on the scene – Ethan Delphy, who Maya isn’t entirely happy with and writes to this American author and you can feel the frustrating when the reply is not directly from him. She is then compelled to track him down, encouraged by publishing friend – Ailsa.

It’s easy to lose yourself in the book and wonder if things will come good for Maya or not and it’s hard not to hope that they do, but there are some love/hate relationships going on, that it’s easy to just hope get sorted out one way or another and that she gets what she wants, but she has to make some decisions on that first. It’s interesting to see where The Meeting Point is and what then unfolds from that.

This is a delightful book for the romantics and for people who also like to hear about snippets of conversations about other books and going to lovely cafes. It’s a lovely relaxing and entertaining read for the most part.