Review: The Trouble with Destiny by Lauren Morrill

The Trouble with Destiny by Lauren Morrill
Publisher: Delacorte
Publication Date: December 8th 2015
My rating: 4 stars 

It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey... With her trusty baton and six insanely organized clipboards, drum major Liza Sanders is about to take Destiny by storm—the boat, that is. When Liza discovered that her beloved band was losing funding, she found Destiny, a luxury cruise ship complete with pools, midnight chocolate buffets, and a $25,000 spring break talent show prize. Liza can’t imagine senior year without the band, and nothing will distract her from achieving victory. She’s therefore not interested when her old camp crush, Lenny, shows up on board, looking shockingly hipster-hot. And she’s especially not interested in Russ, the probably-as-dumb-as-he-is-cute prankster jock whose ex, Demi, happens be Liza’s ex–best friend and leader of the Athenas, a show choir that’s the band’s greatest competition. But it’s not going to be smooth sailing. After the Destiny breaks down, all of Liza’s best-laid plans start to go awry. Liza likes to think of herself as an expert at almost everything, but when it comes to love, she’s about to find herself lost at sea.  

The Trouble with Destiny was so much of a different read than I was expecting it to be. When I was first introduced to the characters, I thought I knew which way things would plan out, which characters would end up together and I believed myself to be a good judge of character too, but I couldn’t have been more wrong, Morrill really turned things on their head for me in this book, but I think I much preferred the character developments and story that Morrill gave us then what I thought was going to happen.

Liza knows this competition is her bands for last chance, the $25,000 is exactly what they need to keep their band going, if they don’t win the competition, the school will be making major cuts and Liza knows her band will be the one most affected. But the heat of the competition, being stuck on this cruise ship in order to compete and not getting enough band practice is really taking its toll on the band members that Liza knows she can’t bring herself to tell everyone the truth. Where I thought at first this was the best possible decision Liza could make, as the story progressed I could see that hiding it from everyone and at the same time trying to keep the band in check was becoming too much for Liza, so much that she was turning into somebody nobody knew, not even her best friend and snapping at band members wasn’t helping either. Then there was Demi and her show choir the Athenas who they have to compete with too, with her sabotaging the bands practice and making things worse there was only so much that Liza could deal with. I really did want Liza to go on and win the competition, not only so that the band could continue, but with all the effort Liza had put in, she deserved it. At times Liza could push people too hard or would misread things that were right in front of her, but under all that she was a decent person and I really wanted her to succeed.

Of course when Liza bumped into her old friend Lenny and former crush on the boat, it brings back all these old feelings flooding back and from the way he’d turned out now, Liza is ecstatic to see him. Lenny was adorable, I liked how when things would get tough for Liza, Lenny was there for her. But this is the part of the book that I liked the most Morrill throws in some neat, yet subtle character developments which really threw a spanner into the works, it had me double checking myself at times and really questioning characters at times. But the fun of events that Morrill implemented were great to watch unfold, as the character that I ended up liking the most (seriously he was the sweetest, he was totally under the radar until one point) and the way things ended up I couldn’t have wished for a better way. The Trouble with Destiny for me was a really cute read, it’s one of those books perfect for curling up with during these cold winter months, but what I loved a lot about it too was the fact that Morrill was able to weave in great underlying messages that our characters were able to take away and help them to make the right decisions. I think these take away messages will appeal to a lot of readers too.