Tightwads on the Loose peaked my attention because I love adventure and traveling. In 2020, not being able to travel has been hard so I thought traveling vicariously with Wendy Hinman and her husband Garth would be a good way to suppress some of the travel bug.
Wendy and Garth spent close to seven years traveling around the world on their boat. Both have boating experience; in fact, Garth had traveled around the world in the 70's. Together they live out this dream that became much more grand than expected.
Wendy shares their many experiences, the people they meet, places they visit, the challenge of being in a small space with one person for a long time and what happens when your boat breaks down and you need to work to raise money to fix it.
What I enjoyed about this memoir was that Wendy captures the joys and trials travelling, basically on their own and with a limited budget. Traveling, if you allow it, is a learning experience. She talks about cultural differences, the kind strangers they encounter, and how you can sometimes feel like you are in a completely different world, cut off from what's going on with the rest of the globe. Wendy also shares the need for flexibility. In their case, flexibility for changes in weather, people arriving later than expected and having to wait in places longer than expected. There's also the need to help others and to take the time to fix their own boat when needed and they learned not to say, "how much worse can it get".
I think that if I had read this book, I may have enjoyed it more. The writing felt like it went from one thing to the other. First we did this, then we did this, then this and this and then this and oh by the way we did this. It wasn't told like a story with characters and a well developed plot. I get that it's a memoir, but something was missing. I could have probably gotten over this, but because I listened to the audio, the narrator's voice bugged me a bit and it felt like parts that were supposed to be funny lost their humour. That was disappointing. The Hinman's adventure though, is anything but disappointing.
Bookworm Rating: 🐛🐛🐛🌱
Thank you to Salsa Press and NetGalley for a free audiobook for an honest review.
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