Five Tries to Get It Right by Kathryn Dodson – Review by Dr. Anya Schultz

Five Tries to Get It Right by Kathryn Dodson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Five Tries to Get It Right is a story about 2 lifelong girlfriends on a mission to find themselves. Lydia is a retired school teacher, widow, and whose daughter is doing a semester at sea. She goes to help her bestie of decades, Kate, who is at her lowest point in life after a divorce and being bought out of her company. The two women feel so lost and decide that they are going to get back on track or at least try. They plan to go back to the lives they lived in their 20s (now in their 50s), travel the world, and reexperience “the good times”. Their plan involves traveling back to the 5 countries they once traveled to. At each stop, they tried to partake in similar adventures from their youth, but they realized things were just not the same. So, they try to relive these experiences in new ways as they travel around the world. Without giving too much away, each woman has goals that they want to figure out by the end of the trip. Lydia wants to find a husband and a future that is different from the path she was on. Kate wants to find peace. Will traveling “back in time” give them the space to find what they are looking for?
I thought this was a truthful story. If you are looking for a story about girlfriends being there for each other, suffering together, but also finding themselves, this is a good choice. As someone in their 40s, I understand the need to reinvent yourself or fix things you wished would have happened, but didn’t have the guts to make happen. These women try to accomplish this through travel. I enjoyed both characters. They felt real, relatable, and troubled, but also strong and hopeful at the same time. I would warn people to look at the trigger warnings because there are a lot of mental health aspects to this book.

View all my reviews