It's New Year's Day and the year isn't kicking off well for Tansy: her mother's dead, she's a cocaine addict and her boyfriend has just left her. A trip around the world seems like the only option except that she's not interested in seeing the world, just escaping from it, and the last people she wants to hang out with are backpackers.

Backpack

Meet Tansy, a trendy Londoner, who's mother has just died. Using her inheritance, Tansy decides to take the trip through Asia that she and her boyfriend had been planning until he dumped her. Tansy has trouble fitting in with the other backpackers and the simple lifestyle it requires. She thought it would be glamorous and fashionable, not sparse and grungy. And as she travels from place to place, she keeps hearing about blond English girls turning up dead. Soon Tansy begins to think that she is the one that is supposed to be killed.

This book is billed as chick-lit, but it really is so much more. Tansy is a very mixed up young woman, who's mother was an alcoholic that drank herself to death. At the beginning of the novel, Tansy is in the hospital recovering from an overdose of cocaine the night of her mother's funeral. As Tansy discovers that she doesn't really like herself that much, her trip becomes more than an adventure, also a life lesson. Interspersed throughout the novel are emails that Tansy exchanges with her friends and family back home and backpackers she has met along her trip. And there is a love interest, Max, the exact opposite of the kind of man Tansy sees herself with. But then Tom, her ex-boyfriend, decides to meet up with Tansy along the trip and she must choose who she really is.

I liked this book a lot. It is funny, well-written, and takes you to a lot of very cool places: Vietnam, India, China, Thailand, Nepal, and Tibet. And the mystery of the murdered girls is a complete surprise. But it is not a light fluffy read. Just a really good book.

my rating 4.5/5 ( )

This book is about Tansy, whose mother had just died, and her and her then boyfriend decide to take a year out and travel. Tansy drinks too much and takes cocaine and is extremely dislikeable. At the last minute her boyfriend tells her he's not coming and she sets off on her own. She goes to Vietnam, seemingly determined not to enjoy herself, and slowly starts making new friends and relaxing into the 'backpacker' (she hates being termed a backpacker) lifestyle. In the background of the story a man is going around, killing blonde, female backpackers. Each one dies with an object in their hands, which coincides with objects that Tansy has.

The story hurtles towards it's conclusion, and the murderer and Tansy are linked, which the reader already realises - but I still did not know who it was until he was revealed!

I really, really enjoyed this book. I found it to be very well-written, easy to read, with a great story which led the reader down a certain path. Tansy becomes a very likeable character, once she shakes off her old, sad, London life, and the other characters are all well-formed and interesting.

I will certainly be reading more of Emily Barr's books, and cannot recommend this one highly enough! ( )

Twentysomething bitch Tansy uit Londen reist door het Oosten. ( )

Started out having no sympathy for the main character. Luckily I got through the first 50 pages without throwing the book out the window. Turned out to be quite an enjoyable read. ( )