Happy Sapphic September!
I have somehow not read any of Alison Cochrun’s previous books, and I enjoyed Every Step She Takes so much, I’m going to need to read her backlist.
Every Step She Takes is a journey of discovery story. Sadie impulsively announces she’ll take her sister’s place on a Camino de Santiago tour in Portugal. She has no idea what she’s getting herself into. She doesn’t know that the tour group is queer focused, she doesn’t know that the Camino is historically a religious pilgrimage, she doesn’t know that they start walk the day they arrive in Porto, and she doesn’t know that her sister signed up to share a room. She doesn’t even know how to order coffee and rejects an offer of help, ending up with something she doesn’t want and feeling foolish. By the end of day two she is a physical and emotional mess and pretty sure she has made a big mistake. But as her sister says, good! It’s time she started making mistakes. It’s also time for her to figure out who she is.
Mal has walked the Camino before, in fact, she and the tour leader, Inez, met on the Camino 20 years earlier and Mal gave Inez the money to start the tour company. Mal has decided to walk the Camino again because on the day she found out her estranged father had died, her girlfriend dumped her. She needs to find a way to grieve, figure out what to do with the company her father left her, and not fall into her old habit of falling in love with the first pretty woman she comes across. Inez specifically asks her not to fall in love with Sadie, but the two are also roommates.
Sometimes I think I read romance as much for the the main characters figuring out who they are as I do for the falling in love. These characters are deliberately and specifically taking this two week walking tour to learn things about themselves and gain clarity. Before the walk began, Sadie loudly proclaimed to Mal, in a moment of terror, that she thinks she might be a lesbian, but she doesn’t know and she’s never had sex with anyone. Sadie took over her grandmother’s antique store when she was in college and has subsumed all personal growth into the store. Away from everything she knows and all her routines, Sadie starts off miserable, but as she pushes on, she learns she’s capable of more than she imagined and she learns to open herself up to other people. Mal is trying so hard not to fall in love with Sadie (because she has a history of falling in love to avoid dealing with problems) and failing so spectacularly. All of the characters are dealing in some way with rejection and the fear of rejection.
Alison Cochrun has an eye for the ridiculous and then pushing through the funny to the human. One of the details I really appreciated was seeing how Sadie and Mal each met the tour group. Mal, an experience queer of the world thought in terms on the butch-femme spectrum, while Sadie, who had locked herself away in the antique shop she inherited from her grandmother, thinks of them according to her perceptions of their gender. It’s easy to see how Sadie will open and blossom from time spent with the group. The more subtle (and yet splashier) growth is the way Mal learns to allow others to help her find her ground.
I enjoyed this so much that flying to Portugal to walk 170 miles with a queer group intent on finding themselves sounds more amazing than intimidating. Given that I am middle-aged, out of shape, and beset by dietary restrictions, that is something of a miracle.
I received this as an advance reader copy from Atria Books and NetGalley.