Clare L. Deming

I picked up The Road to Roswell after having an opportunity to listen to Connie Willis talk to my local science fiction club about her writing (paid links). This is her most recent novel and is a humorous stand-alone story. I listened to the audiobook edition, narrated by Jesse Vilinsky.

Connie Willis isn’t a new author to me. I have read several books in her Oxford Time Travel series, starting with The Doomsday Book (paid links). I’m sure I’ve read some of her short stories in magazines, but I tend to lose track of which shorter works I have read.

Here are my reviews of some of her other books:

• To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel #2)
• Blackout (Oxford Time Travel #3)
• All Clear (Oxford Time Travel #4)

Here is the blurb:

When level-headed Francie arrives in Roswell, New Mexico, for her college roommate’s UFO-themed wedding—complete with a true-believer bridegroom—she can’t help but roll her eyes at all the wide-eyed talk of aliens, which obviously don’t exist. Imagine her surprise, then, when she is abducted by one.

Odder still, her abductor is far from what the popular media have led her to expect, with a body like a tumbleweed and a mass of lightning-fast tentacles. Nor is Francie the only victim of the alien’s abduction spree. Before long, he has acquired a charming con man named Wade, a sweet little old lady with a casino addiction, a retiree with a huge RV and a love for old Westerns, and a UFO-chasing nutjob who is thoroughly convinced the alien intends to probe them and/or take over the planet.

But the more Francie gets to know the alien, the more convinced she becomes that he’s not an invader. That he’s in trouble and she has to help him. Only she doesn’t know how—or even what the trouble is.

Part alien-abduction adventure, part road trip saga, part romantic comedy, The Road to Roswell is packed full of Men in Black, Elvis impersonators, tourist traps, rattlesnakes, chemtrails, and Close Encounters of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth kind. Can Francie, stuck in a neon green bridesmaid’s dress, save the world—and still make it back for the wedding?

This book was a lot of fun to read and played on UFO and alien-abduction tropes, both to move the story along, and to provide some great laughs. Francie is the perfect protagonist for this, starting out as a skeptic, but being unable to disbelieve what happens to her. The group that is swept along in the adventure is a wonderful assortment of characters and they all add their own unique personalities to the story.

The plot didn’t go where I expected it to, but that’s okay in the end. The story also features a touch of rom-com. The audiobook was easy to listen to and I was swept into the story immediately. This was a fun read and is definitely a stand-alone novel, so it won’t add to my massive list of series that I need to finish.

Have you read anything by Connie Willis? What is your favorite story? Let me know in the comments (above).

Find more of my reviews here.