I really liked the story, but some of the writing style really annoyed me ( )

Very enjoyable book about the "Gap Year" of the Wheelan family and their travels around the world. Not everything turns out perfectly (Flesh-eating bacteria, etc.), but it was a good book to listen to in a Covid era! ( )

Maybe you only live once, but perhaps you can take a second gap year.

If you hate those Christmas letters composed to make you envy the writer’s family and wonder why your own family is so dull, then this book is not for you. It’s that letter, 288 pages long.
Charles Wheelan and his wife Leah took a gap year after college graduation and explored the world. I guess that’s one way to test compatibility early on in a relationship. Twenty-five years later, they are still together, with three teenage children, and decide to take a midlife gap year as a family. A YOLO dream reprised, so to speak.
They set out from their home in a New Hampshire college town with a plan to return in nine months and very few fixed points in between, There are places they want to visit, but are relaxed about when and how they will get there. That was probably wise. I don’t stand up well to even a week of “if this is Tuesday, it must be Belgium” touring. The Wheelan family, especially Leah, demonstrate a remarkable ability to transform a whim into a workable plan on the fly (assuming a good internet connection), and (almost) stay within budget as they go.
Most of all, the family set out to savor the uniqueness of each place they visited in a relaxed way (with generous helpings of street food).
The family is also remarkable for its insouciance in the face of obstacles. That circular sore on the foot of one daughter turned out to be from a flesh-eating parasite with life-threatening consequences. After a series of misdiagnoses on two continents and thwarted attempts at treatment in three different Asian countries, they put her on a plane to Munich for treatment (but first, the week-long hike through Bhutan).
Wheelan writes well, although stretches of this book read like unprocessed journal entries (we went there, we did that). Other passages however clearly recount peak experiences: arriving in Patagonia, the southern tip of South America, visits to Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat, and the Galapagos, and scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef. Vivid illustration of one of the lessons Wheelan draws in the epilogue: experiences we share enrich our lives more than stuff we acquire.
Something seems to have gone wrong with the text in chapter three of my Kindle edition, however. Wheelan records a family meltdown; he wisely ran it past the censorious eyes of Leah before publication. I get it that “the quick brown fox” stands for anything Leah redlined, but in the process of making those changes, a passage also seems to have become garbled and repeated.
When one of our daughters suggested this book for our monthly long-distance bookclub, I expected, going in, one of those Bill Bryson adventures. There is a little of that in this book: the author is endearingly self-deprecating in the right amount, but unlike Bryson on the Appalachian Trail, this is not a record of failure, but of glorious success.
There was an irony in reading this after a year of lockdown, having let plane tickets, rail passes, and hotel reservations elapse. While no substitute for real travel, reading this book was a pleasurable armchair adventure.
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I LOVED this book! It made me laugh out loud. I love the perspective of travelling with three teenagers. Wheelan provides enough detail about the places they visited to make them distinct. (I would've loved more, but I don't feel he skimped on any place he wrote about.) I loved Wheelan & his wife's approach to travel. And I loved the amount that was included about South America. ( )