The journey began and ended in the town of Amherst, Mass., home to the great poet Emily Dickinson and now the great non-fiction writer Evan Kenward. Or, so the author of “Young Wanderlust” seems to think.

Kenward paints a beautiful, nature-filled scene of his journey across the country and up into Canada as his first adventure fresh out of college at the University of Massachusetts. As he waits to figure out what to do with his life, he looks forward to the 28-day journey he has planned with his friends. He engages in numerous altercations with his traveling partners, “Gil” and “Wallace.” Halfway across the country he begins to have issues with Wallace’s attitude, using his novel as more of a 13-year-old girl’s diary.

Similarly, his personality is incredibly distracting. He seems to mock several people throughout the book and his tone occasionally becomes unfriendly and angry. It seems like he tries very hard to make the reader like him, which, of course, made me hate him.

As a written novel, “Young Wanderlust” is in serious need of a publisher. Between the horrible usage of commas, the lack of differentiation between “peak” and “pique” and the overwhelming amount of try-hard alliteration, textual errors make the story difficult to enjoy and even more difficult to relate to. At one point, his friend Casey is referred to as “Calab,” shattering the illusion of the pseudonym.

Kenward deserves his due credit, though. Not many college graduates can travel across the country and back, remembering all of the details and writing a 470-page novel about their experiences. Better yet, not many college graduates attempt to inspire other students pursuing their degrees. Kenward definitely pushes a message, however getting to the end of the novel can be extremely tedious.

As an entertainment writer, however, Kenward has much growing to do and many basic grammatical principles to overcome before he can afford a respectable readership.

At the very least, “Young Wanderlust” is an excellent National Geographic-style description of the continental United States and Kenward definitely has a future in writing natural description.

For those looking for a difficult-to-read novel to read this summer as they’re on their own road trip, the scenic “Young Wanderlust” is the immediate go-to. This reader would not recommend it for someone looking for more plot and less imagery and offers two out of five stars.