Wednesday, July 21, 2004

On the Road to Mr Right

On the Road to Mr Right
by Belinda Jones
reviewed by Adelynn
 
I picked up this book thinking it was a quirky chick lit novel set in America in the same vein as her other novels (Diva Las Vegas, I Love Capri, The Californian Club). It was only when I started it that I realised it was an actual journey, a travel novel of sorts, only that the main aim of the journey(s) was to look for Love and her Mr Right.
 
The photos at the beginning of the chapters show her at signposts proclaiming that she's currently at Eden, or Valentine, or, get this, Climax. She picks out towns based on their names and romantic prospects.
 
Judging by the way she describes some of the hotties she meets, I'm almost tempted to fly to USA to search for eye-candies as well. Other than the descriptions of her Romeos, she also paints vivid pictures of the towns and her lodgings.
 
She is one rich lady, I can assure you, and after reading her biography on her website, I found out why. She's a rather established writer in the UK, and I even remember her from an article in a UK mag which I read back in 1997. Explains her perchant for glamorous, glitzy hotels with Jacuzzis.
 
She manages to make her story sound like fiction, yet she also reveals her vulnerable insecurities brought on by men, especially rampant during her time with Punctured Paul. She writes with an almost self-deprecating, can-it-be-true-that-he-fancies-lil-ole-me style. Yet her self-discovery and development can be charted with each town and each hunk. At the end, she emerges confident and aglow.

VIsit the website for some chapters which did not make it into the book, and also pictures from her journey. If you're a single gal in her part of town, there's a brother she'd like to introduce to you...

The Wrong Way Home

The Wrong Way Home
by Peter Moore
Reviewed by Adelynn
 
The predecessor to Vroom With a View (see previous entry). This time, the author plots to take the hippie trail (he thinks) from London back to Sydney without hopping upon an aeroplane.

Along with his humorous takes on the people he meets along the way, he also weaves in the current, and sometimes historical, political situations in the Third World countries.

There are nice, trusting people who do not think twice about offering him a free room under their roofs; there are perverts who make him squirmy. There are a handful of developed countries but mostly, they are undeveloped/underdeveloped countries which are war-torn, dangerous for foreigners, polluted or all of the above. Singapore gets barely a two-page mention. No great love there then (I think it's too modernised and pristine for his liking).

I particularly like the part where he has not enough value in his phonecard to make a international call in Tibet to his mum, but enough to call the Australian embassy there to play a prank on the unsuspecting lady.

Does he actually fulfil his wish of travelling home overland all the way? That's for you to find out. I, for one, am inspired to go to Ko Phangan in Bangkok for an idyllic retreat.