Francie is a reluctant Maid of Honor, for several reasons.
The first is that her friend Serena has terrible taste in men. Previous fiancés have included a storm-chaser, a shaman and a kamikaze base-jumper. This is the closest a wedding has come to happening, and it’s to a UFO-chaser.
The second is that, as a result, the wedding is being held in New Mexico. In Roswell. During the UFO festival.
After a series of travel disasters that end with her car sharing with another wedding guest – who also happens to be an FBI agent – a wedding due to take place in the UFO Museum, conducted by a high priest from the Church of Galactic Truth, and a frankly repellent bridesmaid dress, the alien abduction is actually a high point of Francie’s day.
Bundled by an alien into an SUV, which she is forced to drive, what follows is a chaotic road trip, picking up other waifs and strays, hotwiring an RV, and desperately trying to work out what their alien captor actually wants.

IN A NUTSHELL
‘The Road To Roswell‘ a great read: funny, clever, original and upbeat. I strongly recommend the audiobook. Jesse Vilinsky’s performance was perfect, amplifying the fun and bringing the characters, especially the aliens, alive.

The novel is structured as a classic quest with a ragtag cast of (mostly) well-meaning eccentrics evading MIB-style FEDs while helping an alien who looks like a tumbleweed find something that it’s unable to explain to them. It’s packed with references to just about every Western or Alien First-Contact movie I’ve ever seen. It takes all the tropes and makes them sparkle with humour and unexpected twists. AND the narrator is wonderful.

I was delighted when I saw that Connie Willis’ latest novel was a comedy. I’ve loved her humour since I first read her 1997 novella ‘Bellwether‘ decades ago. She’s excelled herself in ‘The Road To Roswell’. It’s pure anarchic fun, fine-tuned to appeal to any of us who have been reading Science Fiction and watching Westerns for most of our lives.

I liked that the story started at a gentle pace, albeit with our heroine being kidnapped by an alien within a chapter or two. I hate being pushed into laugh-track-plays-now comedic setups, so I was pleased to be given the time to get to know the people and watch the humour evolve from the mix of their (eccentric and clashing) personalities and their (bizarre) situation. The humour started out as amusing rather than hilarious and then gradually became increasingly chuckle-worthy.

One the things that made the novel so much fun for me was that Connie Willis played this as a serious story as well as a comedy and that, along the way, she twisted just about every First-Contact trope into something that made me laugh and kept me engaged with the characters.

I particularly loved how alien the alien was. It’s not at all humanoid. It doesn’t fit into the Roswell Taxonomy of aliens: the Greys, the Greens and the Reptilians. Connie Willis’ alien looks like a tumbleweed and can do amazing things with its tentacles.

I liked that Francie, our abducted-by-aliens-she-doesn’t believe in, heroine stays calm(ish) rather than going into shock when she makes unexpected first contact. Her pragmatic, I-can-handle-this demeanour meant it was even funnier when, after her abduction, she managed to call 911 only to be treated as yet another Roswell prankster.

Most of the book is a fun romp. It’s structured as a classic quest with a ragtag cast of (mostly) well-meaning eccentrics evading MIB-style FEDs while helping an alien who they’re struggling to communicate with, find something that it’s unable to explain to them but which it’s desperate to locate. The quest covers a lot of territory: Roswell, Las Vegas, the desert, more desert and Monument Valley. As with any decent quest, there are puzzles to solve, enemies to outwit and deceptions and betrayals to survive. Even so, this is a joyous book rather than a tense one but it does have moments of tension and high drama.

At the centre of it all is Francie’s growing need to protect her abductor from humans and aliens and help it to find whatever it is that it’s looking for.

The ending was as perfect as it was unexpected. It made me want to cheer.

I strongly recommend the audiobook version of ‘The Road To Roswell’. Jesse Vilinsky gives an outstanding performance. She gives the each of the large cast of characters a distinct voice. I loved how she managed to make Francie sound level-headed but with panic scrabbling at her calm. The voice she came up with for the alien who never speaks /you’ll have to read the book to find out what that means) was perfect. It made it sound very alien but also very likeable.