The Grey Nomads by John Richardson

Here is a very long overdue review. This comes from one of the very first ARCs I ever received on Netgalley in 2013! New to the platform I made a downloading error and then the ARC was archived before I understood how to work everything appropriately. My user error shouldn't be the author's detriment so I went looking for the book once it published. I could only find a digital addition at $6, and I was not willing to pay so much for something untested. Being a foreign publication, I couldn't locate it through my local libraries either. 

After 8 years of waiting for the book to go on sale, I finally gave up hope. I had stockpiled quite a bit of digital dollars letting my items ship at a snail's pace and redeemed them for this book. I am relieved that the book ended up costing me nothing more than some patience, but at the same time, very upset that I could have used my points to redeem something worthy.

Unfortunately, I really had let 8 years of hopes get the better of me. I truly love travelogues and was very much looking forward to this 8-month round the world narrative. A husband and wife duo were going to spend 8 months in 4 different countries traveling by pretty much every means possible. Starting in the U.S. proceeding to Australia, then up to Malaysia, and finally through Singapore. Plenty of variety to experience.

Sadly, storytelling is not something everyone can do. It's even worse when an editor lets you publish such unskilled work. The flow was terrible, the stories were lifeless, the spelling was inconsistent. We have diatribes on events that did not include travel, locale, or culture in a book about the travel experience. There on the cover, it says a thousand experiences. Where were they!

This book was absolutely flat. There was no life to the many exotic locations and people met through the journey. We never really get to know what the experience actually meant to these people. Nothing is learned, nothing is shared. I shed tears for the missed opportunities of this book.

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