enjoyable book

Travel from the dusty, tout-filled streets and holy sites of Nepal to the sultry metropolises and picture-perfect beaches of Thailand, as Zelda and Ian try to outsmart the smugglers and escape Asia alive.
enjoyed this book very much

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Great story, awful narration!

This is an original story in a time when so many are derivative. It is well written, with engaging characters. I persevered to near the end, but had to give up due to the awful narration. I would not have stuck it out so long, except the author gave me a free copy via Bookboom in exchange for an honest review. The narrator’s regular voice is fine, but she absolutely cannot voice accents other than her own. This is a big issue here, since one of the main characters is Australian (it was impossible to be sure about that until it was confirmed in the writing). The voicing of him and other characters, some of whom were Indian, are so far off as to be painful. I recommend reading the book.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

Money seemed to be the most worshipped..

Love the cover.
In the review of her own story, author Jennifer Alderson describes her book, Down and Out in Kathmandu, as, 'a somewhat silly, slightly cynical, travel adventure story,' and wonders if she has succeeded in providing the reader with this. Absolutely! Two twenty somethings meet in the visa queue at the airport to enter Nepal, neither having had the foresight to equip themselves with one before travelling. Zelda, from Seattle, is a successful computer programmer who still doesn't know what she wants to do with her life. So she'd quit her job for three months of volunteer teaching the unfortunate in Nepal. Ian, from Australia, is a teacher, and he knows exactly what he wants: to fill his sabbatical with some tracking (but not too much) and the lots and lots of cheap drugs friends have told him are easily available there. Both, but especially silly Zelda, are somewhat naive, self pitying and, again, in Zelda' s case, almost perpetually whiny. Had they been teenagers, just freed from parental apron strings, they would still have been pathetic, but understandable. In mid to late twenties? Then there's Tommy, a Canadian, based in Thailand who has fallen in with a smuggling operation.

There is very little traveling in this story, although there are momentary glimpsess of the Nepal experience, the teeming streets, tottering buildings, animals, colour, smiling faces and smells. But not enough. There's far more scent of pot wafting through the cafe. And Ian and Zelda's relationship felt force and unrealistic. Plus where, exactly, was the mystery promised in the title? Beyond Zelda's experience being nothing like the one she had anticipated, blogging really adventurous happens until close to the ending when there is a flurry of excitement and action.

So much depends on the narrator for the successful presentation of an Audiobook and, sadly, despite the pleasurable timbre of Renee Dodd's mellow voice, combined with good intonation and clear reading, her Australian accent when voicing Jan was so dreadful, this reader cringed at almost every. syllable. Still, and surpisingly, it was a pleasant read, and my thanks go to the rights holder who, at my request via Audiobook Boom, freely gifted me with a complimentary copy. Would I recommend this book? Yes, but only to a young adult intent on taking the far Eastern backpacking trail of discovery for themselves as a warning to go without unrealistic expectations.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!