'Peter Cabot Gets Lost' by Cat Sebastian
- Reed
- Jan 22
- 3 min read
Author: Cat Sebastian
Rating: B
Vibe: : 1960s road trip romance with class tension, shared motel rooms, and golden retriever energy
Summer 1960. Caleb Murphy has just graduated from college on scholarships and sheer determination, and he's got a job waiting for him in Los Angeles. The only problem is he's stranded in Boston with no way to get there. Enter Peter Cabot—wealthy, privileged, unfairly kind—offering to drive him across the country. Caleb can barely stand the guy, but he doesn't have a choice. Peter, meanwhile, is fleeing his suffocating political family (think Kennedy-esque dynasty) and has no idea what comes next. What follows is a week on the road, two men in close quarters, and the slow unraveling of assumptions, defenses, and carefully maintained distance.
I liked this book. Cat Sebastian knows how to write characters who feel like actual people rather than romance novel archetypes, and that's on full display here. Peter is the standout—he's warm, thoughtful, a little oblivious to how his privilege reads to others, but never in a way that feels like the narrative is excusing it. He recognizes the advantages he's had, he pushes back on them when he can, and his family trauma—the constant message that he's mediocre, disappointing, not enough—felt painfully real. The golden retriever energy works because it's grounded in someone who's trying to be good in a family that doesn't value goodness.
Caleb took me a little longer to warm up to. At the start, he's prickly—defensive, resentful, quick to assume the worst about Peter's motives. And I get it. He's worked his ass off to get where he is, and here's this guy whose luggage probably costs more than everything Caleb owns. But it was a little much at first, bordering on off-putting. Around a quarter of the way in, though, he chilled out and started to feel more like a fully realized person rather than just Class Resentment Guy. Once that happened, the dynamic between them clicked.
The road trip setup is intimate and intense in a way that works—two people in a car, motels with one bed, diners and pancakes and long stretches of highway. Sebastian leans into the vibes hard, and when it works, it really works. This is very much a "vibes over plot" book, and if you're looking for narrative momentum, you might get frustrated. The plot is slow. Things happen, but the book is much more interested in mood, banter, and the gradual softening of two people who didn't expect to need each other.
Where it stumbled for me was the angst-sex-angst cycle. They'd have a conflict, they'd have sex, they'd be vulnerable, and then they'd circle back to some version of the same tension. It wasn't always the exact same issue—sometimes it was class stuff, sometimes it was about what comes next, sometimes it was just fear—but the structure started to feel repetitive. A little bit of that is inevitable in a romance, but this one leaned on it a little too heavily for my taste.
The 1960s setting is done well, but it's not the point of the book. This is a will-they-won't-they, enemies-to-lovers, shared-hotel-room-trope romance that happens to be set in 1960. The period details are there—the danger of being two gay men on the road, the cultural context, the sense of what's at stake—but Sebastian isn't writing a historical treatise. The setting serves the story without overwhelming it, and I appreciated that. It's textured without being heavy-handed.
Ultimately, Peter Cabot Gets Lost is a charming, well-written romance with strong character work and a lovely sense of intimacy. It's not perfect—too much reliance on vibes, a little too repetitive in its conflicts—but it's a solid B. If you're looking for a sweet, low-angst road trip romance with characters who feel real and a mood that lingers, this one's worth your time.