Eighty Days to Elsewhere | ARC Review

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Summary

“The Amazing Race” meets Around the World in 80 Days as a woman desperate to save her family bookstore falls for her competition.

Born and raised in New York City, Ramona Keene dreams of attending photography school and traveling to Paris, but her reality never quite catches up with her imagination. Instead, she works at her uncles’ quaint bookstore, where the tea is plentiful and all the adventures are between the covers of secondhand books. But when the new landlord arrives with his Evil Nephew in tow, Romy’s quiet life comes crashing down. He plans to triple the rent, something her uncles can’t afford.

In order to earn the money to help save the bookstore, Romy applies for a job at ExLibris Expeditions, a company that re-creates literary journeys. Romy snags the oddest internship ever: retrace Phileas Fogg’s journey from Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days and plan a suitable, contemporary adventure for a client. The task is close to impossible; sticking to the original route means no commercial aircraft permitted, and she’s got a lot less than eighty days to work with. Shaking off her fear of leaving home, Romy takes on the challenge, only to discover she’s got competition. Worse, Dominic Madison turns out to be the – unfortunately hot – nephew of her family’s worst enemy.

Can Romy win the race and circle the globe in time to save the bookstore? And what happens when she starts to fall for the very person who may just be the death of her dreams?

Review

The synopsis and overall idea of this book really drew me in and made me so excited to read this book! Then I actually started reading it…

The beginning started out really slow, but I was optimistic. The author was setting up the scene nicely and I recognized there were some things I, as the reader, needed to learn before I could jump into the adventurous part of the story. However, it all seemed to drag on for too long. Even once the main character embarked on her great adventure, I wasn’t feeling the excitement of it with her. I was still feeling bored and almost like I was being dragged along.

I stuck with it though, hoping things would get better. They somewhat did, just not as much to the extent that I would have liked. I appreciated that we were able to experience a lot of different activities and highs and lows with the main character, but it didn’t feel exciting.

Even the romance fell a little flat for me in this book. We’d get little glimpses of her love interest, but not enough to really progress the relationship in my opinion. Again, I was hopeful at the beginning because things seemed to be setting up nicely, and then it just dragged. There were some cute moments, but I wasn’t completely swept up in it.

The evolution we see in the main character was probably the only thing I really liked about this book. She was almost in a rut in her life at the beginning of the book so it’s nice to see her learn more about herself and what she wants in life as she goes on this crazy adventure.

Overall, this was a thumbs down for me. I’ve been seeing lots of great reviews for this book so maybe it was just me, but whatever the case may be, I won’t be recommending this book.

Disclaimer: I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Rating

To check out my other reviews, click here. Or to check out more books by K.C. Dyer, go to her GoodReads profile.