Book Reviews: Books to give you Wanderlust.

When I think of some of the happiest times of my life many of these moments involve travelling. I think about the time I spent $32 on gelato in one sitting in Venice, watching my love pretend to be a security guard at the Trevi Fountain while whistling at anyone who dared sit down along the edge, spending hours in Shakespeare and Company bookshop looking for the resident cat, discussing the art in The Louvre with my love while we make up elaborate stories of the men and women in 18^th century portraits, shopping for vintage dresses in every market place in London with my beautiful German bestie, eating Magnolia Bakery’s cupcakes with my girls in New York, being stranded alone at L.A.X and having my favourite celebrity see my Instagram post and offer to show me around Los Angeles on a push bike… and honestly I can spend all day telling you about my favourite adventures while travelling. Some of the people I love most are scattered across this world in beautiful cities and whenever I miss them I think about all the adventures we have had. If you want to spend a night visiting a far off land and getting to know new friends then this is the book list for you.

1. Love and Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch.

Italy is obviously famous for the best food in the world…pizza, pasta and gelato. While reading this lovely book I went and got gelato countless times. How good is hazelnut gelato? The answer is as good as this book.

Love & Gelato tells the story of Lina who just moved to Florence to be with the father she has never met after the heart breaking loss of her beloved mother. 17 years ago Lina’s mother spent a semester in Florence studying photography where she met Lina’s father and wrote about their love in a journal. While reading this journal and visiting the places and people from her mother’s past Lina still manages to find the time to have a slow-to-boil love story. Lina starts to fall in love with her new Italian best friend who happens to have a Swedish model girlfriend.

While the love story may be predictable it still is nice to see a relationship develop over time in a novel, its like watching Monica and Chandler realise they love each other. While reading this I started to wish I read this novel before my trip to Italy last year because it would have been nice to be introduced to the city by Lina. Florence is such a romantic city and it is easy to fall in love with Florence. While Lina is an imperfect girl with an imperfect life this novel demonstrates that no matter how bad things can get we can get through anything with love and Italian ice cream.

2. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

I started reading this novel by the beach on Sundays but switched to an audio book for my commute. My first ever audio-book! Downloaded from Audible and read by the author. Listening to an audio book is such a relaxing experience and makes peek hour traffic almost tolerable. This is my first memoir in years and I really did enjoy getting to know a real person.

Elizabeth is 31, successful, married and living in a beautiful home. When her and her husband start trying for a baby, Elizabeth soon realizes this is not the life she wants. Elizabeth wants to channel my favourite Disney princess, she wants adventure in the great wide somewhere. Elizabeth gets a divorce and immediately packs her bags. Elizabeth’s adventures in Italy, India and Indonesia develop into a mission into finding a balance between pleasure and inner peace. Elizabeth’s life is going through transition as she copes to hold herself together after her divorce and her break up with her rebound love.

Getting to know Elizabeth during her journey was wonderful because she is smart, funny, cool and ultimately truly relatable. Listening to an audio book of a person describing in great detail all the pasta, pizza and gelato she was eating almost drove me insane; I mean at one point I turned my car around to go get pizza. Listening to her journey of using meditation to heal herself in India made me start taking yoga more seriously; I kind of suck at it but it makes feel better. Though I did give up on one yoga class to go get more of that aforementioned pizza. The best thing about this book is the characters; Elizabeth makes a diverse set of friends in each city she lives in including a wise former drug addict from Texas and a maybe 100 year old medicine man. The movie with the lovely Julia Roberts does leave out some key elements so give the book a go even if you have seen the movie. This book may just change your life.

3. Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins.

Yes this is the cheesiest of novel titles. This novel title is cheesier than the mozzarella, ricotta and cheddar toastie I had for lunch. If you can get past the title you will find a cute read. This is the type of cute book that is such an easy read you can enjoy while eating macaroons in a tiny cafe and dreaming browsing through the Shakespeare and Company bookshop.

It starts with a typical storyline, girl who loves her life in America is unhappy about having to go to Europe. I mean I want to be more sympathetic towards Anna because it must be difficult to be sent to a foreign country for boarding school but it is in Paris. Paris is the most beautiful of cities… delicious pastries, gorgeous architecture and the most perfect of languages.  Anna meets Etienne St. Clair, a beautiful boy who is taken but we all know love will find a way. It is romantic in the perfect sense of the word. While the whole “best friend turned romantic interest” storyline makes me somewhat uncomfortable nothing can be easy when it comes to young love.  Anna is cool; she is obsessed with movies and dreams of being a film critic. Just feeling the passion Anna feels for movies made me want to spend my weekend watching old French films.

 Last year I sat by a tiny bedroom window overlooking a Beaujolis winery eating macaroons I bought the day before in Paris and being thankful I got to live in the life of Anna for the moment. Read this novel and smell the sweetness of the macaroons coming through the pages.

4. Let’s get lost by Adi Alsaid.

This novel is very similar to John Green’s Paper Towns because it all centres on a road trip and a very mysterious girl. Leila is road tripping to see the Northern Lights but along the way she impacts the lives of the strangers she meets. This novel is set into small parts focusing on the stories of the strangers Leila meets along the way. All the characters Leila meets are vastly different but are all at a pivotal moment of their lives.

When we are put into situations that force us to make tough decisions that impact the rest of our lives we tend to discover who we are and just how brave we can be when throw into the deep end. Each story was captivating and you pray for everything to work out for each friend of Leila’s. Sometimes the strangers we meet while we are travelling find a way to stay in our hearts despite the distance because when we find our people, we need to hold onto them in anyway we can. We need to stand by these strangers and help them when and if they ever do need us.

This novel makes you want to pack up your bags right away and hit the open road. I mean road tripping always seemed terrible to me with all that carsickness but this book showed that every destination means a new adventure.



I hope you enjoyed reading this list...now go off and have an adventure with someone worth falling asleep next to on a crowded plane.