Wir kommen mit

I’ll admit: I side-eyed the premise at first. A grieving dad recreating his dead son’s road trip with a van full of at-risk teens? It screams *Oscar bait* or, worse, *afterschool special*. But Hyde subverts expectations by making August profoundly *unlikable* for long stretches—his grief isn’t noble, it’s messy and sometimes selfish, and the teens call him on it. The dynamic between August and Bethany, a foster kid with a talent for cutting through bullshit, is the heart of the book. Their arguments feel lived-in, like real conversations where no one gets the last word. Schützhold’s narration sells it. She doesn’t overperform the emotions; instead, she lets the silence between lines carry the weight. Her August sounds like a man who’s forgotten how to small talk, and her teens—especially the quieter, more damaged ones—avoid the trap of sounding like adults playing dress-up. My one critique? The audio production occasionally suffers from uneven volume levels during the more intense scenes (I found myself adjusting my headphones more than I’d like). And while the ending avoids easy resolution, it *does* lean a little too hard on symbolic sunsets over the Grand Canyon. Still, this is a road story that earns its miles—not through grand gestures, but through the quiet moments when strangers decide, however briefly, to come along for the ride.