Book Review: The Business Trip | Jessie Garcia
Call me a hypocrite after recently posting about another book that I despised for being riddled with plot holes, because The Business Trip by Jessie Garcia had plot holes aplenty too. And you know what? I loved it! Let’s talk about it.
What is The Business Trip about?
Stephanie and Jasmine have nothing and everything in common. The two women don’t know each other but are on the same plane. Stephanie is on a business trip and Jasmine is fleeing an abusive relationship. After a few days, they text their friends the same exact messages about the same man—the messages becoming stranger and more erratic.
And then the two women vanish. The texts go silent, the red flags go up, and the panic sets in. When Stephanie and Jasmine are each declared missing and in danger, it begs the questions: Who is Trent McCarthy? What did he do to these women— or what did they do to him?
Twist upon twist, layer upon layer, where nothing is as it seems, The Business Trip takes you on a descent into the depths of a mastermind manipulator. But who is playing who?
What did I think?
That’s a pretty good teaser, isn’t it? But without spoiling, let me talk a bit more about the set up for this book. The first part of the book alternates between two women. The first is a woman named Jasmine who lives in a trailer park with an abusive boyfriend (who is awful but somehow almost rivaled by another awful character later in the book who I won’t reveal but you’ll know the minute they have their first chapter who I mean). Jasmine is planning her escape, but that’s not so easy with an abusive and controlling partner and barely any income from her job at a bar (where everyone knows him). Her friend helps her with enough money to flee, and she eventually boards a flight to Denver.
The second woman is named Stephanie and she is a successful producer of a news network in Madison, WI. Stephanie loves her job, but she’s recently divorced and seems generally unhappy with her life. She never takes time off work (I’d argue this is her own fault though, can’t blame others for it) and she is lonely. Her main out-of-work life surrounds her adult son (who doesn’t speak to her much) and her gay neighbor Robert (their friendship is adorable, actually). She dreams of just picking up and leaving her life behind. But first, she has a conference in San Diego she has to attend for work, and she boards her flight which connects through Denver.
And wouldn’t you guess, the two women happen to be seated in the same row for their flight? And they look a bit alike, as a woman in their row notes. Interesting! A few days later, friends and colleagues of both begin to receive strange texts from their friends. The two don’t know each other. Their lives haven’t even intersected beyond that flight to Denver. So, what happened to them after they landed?
This premise absolutely thrilled me. After the first part, the story moves to other narrators piecing together what evidence they have from each woman. Stephanie’s co-producer is nervous when she doesn’t show up for their morning meeting the day after her conference ends. Her best friend Robert is confused and enthralled when he receives a text from her that she met a man and is heading to visit him in Atlanta. Jasmine’s friend who helped her escape is shocked to hear she also met a man, and to receive the money she loaned her. Her ex is furious and trying to find out where she went so he can drag her back. And then there is a man named Trent who they both claim to have met. Who is he? You will find out and it is a doozy.
The story switches narrators frequently, with some only having one or two chapters to share their perspective on what is happening, and others being more frequent. Sometimes this number of narrators can be difficult to keep track of, but Garcia’s narrative style actually made them not only easy to follow, but additive to the story. Each enters at a relevant time with some lead in by the prior narrator. For instance, Stephanie’s colleague Bruce is mentioning the people at the office who know Stephanie is missing, and one of the colleagues Lucy received a text from her. In the next chapter, Lucy gets her own narrative and we learn a lot more about that texts (this was actually a particularly gripping series of chapters!).
The book absolutely flew by. The ending was WILD! Absolutely wild. You should be prepared to suspend some disbelief at the reveal and just enjoy it. It was fun! A bonkers ending for a twisty book. I will say that personally it isn’t the ending I wanted, but I still enjoyed it immensely. I’m going to take my thoughts on that over to the spoiler review so I can speak freely. In the meantime, I’ll ends with this: You need to add this twisty, craazzyyy book to your list. Wild! Unhinged! Fun!
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