The Name Curse - Brooke Burroughs

Title: The Name Curse
Author: Brooke Burroughs
Genre: Chick-lit
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 333
Date read: July 2023

Ever since her father died, Bernie’s life has been stagnant. When concerned friends and family suggest she join a hike through Alaska to gain new perspective, Bernie reluctantly agrees to go, even though she’s never been the adventurous type, unlike her namesake, Great-Aunt Bernice.

Matthew is a struggling screenwriter who needs a week off the grid to gain some inspiration for a new project and to process the reappearance of his absent father.

When the two meet at the trailhead, it’s annoyance at first sight. He’s dismayed to discover that he’ll have to share a tent with Bernie, who doesn’t know the first thing about camping, while she finds he’s a little too into “roughing it” to be a reasonable human being. But as they’re forced to hike through the wilderness together, their relationship becomes a surprising source of empathy and inspiration…and maybe other feelings too. Can the two adversaries find the path to breaking the curse of family expectations—and each other?


Can't quite make up my mind what I thought of this book. It had a strong start, but then sagged at around the mid-way point, and never fully gained traction again. Thus it took me MUCH longer to finish that it ought to have done.

I think one of my issues was that I had expected the Denali hike to take up a much larger part of the book than it actually did - this is NOT a "book about a hike" it's a "book about the people you meet on a hike"... which is well and good, but wasn't what I was looking for.

I did like the characters though, so never considered giving up on the book. It was just a more run-of-the-mill chick-lit than I had hoped for when I set out.