When I was a little girl I would watch Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley and I always wanted to be like those girls in the ponytails snapping their gum while they walked around all cool in their midcalf jeans and sleeveless button-up shirts trolling parking lots for the bad boys who rode motorcycles and drove fast cars and dished on babes. I wasn’t a Richie, Ralph or Potsie girl. I wasn’t really a Fonzie girl either, I thought he was a bit of a creeper. I liked the awful jerk guy that showed up with Pinky Tuscadero. (Looking back now… I clearly knew how to pick them even at a very young age) I do have a point to this trip down my TV memory lane and that is that Lori Bentley Law made me feel that same yearning to be the type of cool girl but only a better one, because the two characters in her book, Jeda and Benny were so effing AMAZEKITTENS!

It’s been a really long time since I read a straight up good best friend book. Motor Dolls isn’t “Chick-lit” like most people would define a Chick-Lit book. I think when people think of that they imagine something like Sex in the City in book form and maybe that made all of you happy but Sex in the City made me want to stab myself in the head repeatedly with a spoon. This book is better than that, I would make a new genre for it and call it “Empowered-Lady-Lit”. That is obviously not going to catch on because it is a mouthful but someone really should push that so it trends.

This book does stand out the from the books where romance and frivolity abounds. It’s a book with a whole lot of substance. The two main characters are going through a true coming of age, Jeda and Benny both as individuals and together as friends are discovering what possibilities are available to them. It has come to the time when they have to ask themselves those really hard questions: Who they are? Who they want to be? Who they can trust? And what really is important? So that they can discover the next part of their lives. Lori sets this up really well and then she manages to show the insecurity, confusion, anger, jealousy, happiness, love and plain old joy that comes from having a close relationship with someone when you haven’t had that sort of friendship before.

That all sounds incredibly deep. Woe is me! Right or no? Well let me introduce them a little. Jeda and Benny met and connected over their passion for vintage vehicles. They share similar interests in what they like to do, the places they like to go and who they hang out with. It sounds like the perfect relationship–but Jeda is not really one of those people who opens up really. She is a little distant. She’s a lot wild. Benny on the other hand pretty much tows the line. She has a life plan. She is doing her Geology courses so she can go back home and save the land she grew up in to make her parents happy. It doesn’t matter that she loves photography. You don’t make money doing what you love. They are sort of like two ships traveling along in sort of the same-ish direction for kinda-ish the time being with the knowledge that at some point the future is going to happen and then life will take them in two different directions. Then Jeda tells Benny what she believes her future will be and it shakes Benny’s beliefs too.

Jeda drops the bomb that she doesn’t believe she is going to live to her 21st birthday. This was a little eerie/alarming to me. I think I was 12 or 13 when I first began to believe I wasn’t going to live to my 27th. I actually completely screwed up my life by believing that I didn’t have to worry about any consequences past that day. So reading this was some scary. Jeda confides in Benny and this rocks Benny’s world. From this confession both women basically begin this long arduous journey of self-discovery and determining self worth. Benny becomes Jeda’s partner-in-crime in a list of reckless events that all go on a list of ways Jeda isn’t going to die.

The icing on the cake is how Lori covers the entirely well done psychological story in a retro world that is incredibly detailed and seductively intriguing. She adds in classic car and car races in the desert, rebuilding custom vintage motorcycles, ghost towns, downhill luging on skateboards, a mysterious man who knows everything they do, diving into dye tanks, flying in a person kite over Santa Monica Pier and the weather in Belize. Her attention to detail and talent for description is extraordinary and her ability to keep the pace of the story makes it fantastic to read.

Jeda and Benny are two best friends who put their friendship ahead of everything else for this Summer of Thrills and find that on the other side that the investment has a payout for life.

I really am not sure what other books to recommend that are similar to this book because it really is singularly a standout above any other of it’s kind.

Purchase Motor Dolls:

Amazon | B&N | Squared Up

 

Lori Bentley Law’s Web Tracks: 

Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon Author Page | Pinterest | Instagram

Lori Bentley Law on All The Things Inbetween:

The Weekly Indie Wordslinger – Lori Bentley Law

Lori Bentley Law’s Books:

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