The Other Side Of The Bridge by Camron Wright

The Other Side Of The Bridge by Camron Wright – 352 pages

ARC courtesy of NetGalley

Book Blurb:

Two coasts. Two strangers.
And a bridge that silently beckons them both.
Katie Connelly has lived in San Francisco all her life. Her late father made his career on the Golden Gate Bridge, and the many stories of how he saved jumpers still haunt her. And now her job assignment is to write about the history of the bridge—a history that includes a secret journal about a promise ring and a love story that may be the answer to her unresolved sorrow.
Meanwhile, Dave Riley, a marketing executive in New York, has sorrows of his own. Grasping at straws after tragedy strikes his family, he decides to follow a daydream that has turned into an obsession: to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge on a motorcycle on the Fourth of July.

My Review: 4 stars

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I was drawn to The Other Side Of The Bridge purely because of its title. When I began, I didn’t know the author or the premise, which made for a complete surprise. It wasn’t until I read the authors notes at the end of the book that I realized it was by one of my favorite authors, Camron Wright.

This book was very different from his other books, The Rent Collector and The Orphan Keeper, which were both based on true stories. In those, Wright used his imagination to add fiction to the facts in creating beautifully written books. This one, however, is pure fiction except for the information shared about the building of the bridge. With two storylines occurring on different sides of the country, the reader is certainly guessing how the two will eventually converge.

In my opinion there were three main characters in the book: Katie, Dave Riley and the bridge itself. The bridge symbolizes hopes, dreams, connection, progress, stability and the title, crossing over the bridge, often represents the end of life. The bridge also plays many roles for very different reasons in this book. I liked Katie’s back-story more; it felt more substantive and brought the making of the bridge alive. Dave’s story started with less promise for me, as I didn’t feel any true connection between him and his wife. Ultimately his path came together too neatly for me. His determination to follow his passions and live his best life were my favorite parts of his storyline. Overall, this was a quick and easy read yet it had none of the power and punch that the aforementioned titles were filled with.