I checked out this book from the travel section of the library hoping to enjoy some travel reading – but there was a lot in here that I didn’t expect.
The book reads like a bunch of blog pages put together, making me wonder why I don’t do something similar for a quick buck. There are certainly some travel stories here, but I think they’ll be most useful to the author and her family as memories, and maybe people who plan to visit some of the same national parks as they did.
I commend the writer for putting these events down on paper, and trying to stay active and fit. Unfortunately there is a lot of extraneous stuff here so that the book didn’t feel like a cohesive whole.
Certain parts really rubbed me the wrong way – mentioning the ethnicity of non-white people she runs into during her trip through Seattle, memories of clients she had during her stint as a counselor for the State of Hawaii, and her fond memories of riding the carousel on Pier 49 in San Francisco. Pier 49? Her husband describes Mt. Whitney at the tallest mountain in the United States. I was waiting for the correction but it never came. Just a little research here would have softened the edges a little.
I think fans of her fiction series will probably enjoy the backstory on this author, but I wouldn’t recommend the book to the casual reader.
