All Over the Place: Adventures in Travel, True Love, and Petty Theft by Geraldine DeRuiter
This memoir, was written with a lot of humor, which had me laughing out loud at times. Even during her hard times, she tried to make light of her situations.
Even though this was labeled a travel book, it is not your normal travels book, as the authors stories are more about how she reacted to the places she went, about her internal fears and inadequacies, more than about the descriptions of the countries. After losing her job, she started a blog and decided to travel with her husband who traveled a lot for work.
What I loved about this story was the love the author and her husband have for one another, and his acceptance of her quirkiness, and his ability to go with the flow..
Well written with great tales of family get-togethers, and of her need for a closer connection with her father, mother, brother and extended relatives. This story takes us on a comical, yet also serious journey to reconnect with not only herself, and her husband, but also that of her extended family.
I would definitely recommend this book.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Perseus Books Group, Public Affairs Books for the ARC of this book.

All Over the Place is a great book! It's an hysterical read, and I found myself laughing out loud throughout the book, especially since her stories are so relateable. We've all been sick in a hotel room or stuck in an unfamiliar city with no clue where to go, and if you've missed out on these experiences, you can live them through Geraldine DeRuiter's stories. This is not your average travel book with recommendations on where to stay or eat, but more of a memoir of her adventures.

Geraldine lets you into her head as she travels with her beloved husband and starts her blog, The Everywhereist. You see the good, the bad, and the ugly of their love story, marriage and travel adventures. She manages to tell even the most personal and difficult stories with humor and wit, including her journey through a brain tumor and its aftermath.

The book is set in chapters that each tell a different story, but it never felt disjointed and I looked forward to the next adventure. The descriptions of the places she goes made me want to book a plane ticket! The story of her Italian mom as she takes her pickax through airport security left me in tears of laughter. You'll love the story set in Barcelona and the one set in Italy, where she tries to find her relatives in a small Italian village.

Geraldine is terrified of getting lost, but in the end she finds that "not all who wander are lost". She reminds me of my own mother, who frequently got lost and told me "just look at what you would have missed if we hadn't gotten lost!"

I highly recommend this book for both actual and armchair travelers.

All Over the Place had me laughing so hard at times that I had tears streaming down my face. Geraldine DeRuiter has written a travel memoir unlike any other travel memoir that I have read, and the result is fabulous. She writes about both her travels around the world and her own internal journey through brain cancer, spousal trouble, and dealing with her hilarious mother (more hilarious when you are not the one having to deal with her I am sure). DeRuiter manages to cover numerous destinations that I have now added to my list of places to see while telling absolutely hysterical stories about her time in each place.

My favorite stories were the one about her mom bringing a pickax through airport security and the time she and her husband went to Italy to meet her relatives and see the towns her grandparents grew up in. I laughed so hard at a section of the Italy story that I had to put the book down for a few minutes to recover. I also love that she is completely prepared for a zombie apocalypse.

The book ends with the following sentence about traveling which will stay with me for a long time: “Even if you don’t end up where you planned, you still might end up somewhere great.” This is a great motto to keep in mind when taking a trip, but even more broadly to remember in our day-to-day lives. I also have to mention that I was so excited to see in the Acknowledgements that DeRuiter shares my obsession with Hamilton. I was not aware of her blog but plan to locate it and start following it.

I am so glad I read this book and highly recommend to everyone. Thanks to PublicAffairs and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

All Over the Place: Adventures in Travel, True Love, and Petty Theft by Wendy Kopp isn't your typical travel book. It is an unconventional travel memoir filled with mishaps and laughter along the way. The author doesn't quit her job, she gets fired. This sets her off on her misadventures in travel and life.

Wendy is traveling with her friend Kati to Italy. They end up sick in their vacation but learn something along the way. They see a beautiful area of Italy.

In this memoir Wendy meets the love of her life, and no, not in Italy, in Seattle. This memoir is filled with interesting characters. Such as the author's mother, who takes a pick ax aboard a plane; who gets them out of being strip searched.

Wendy does not know directions to save her life so she often gets lost. Despite this, at her husband's advice she starts a travel blog and goes with her husband, Rand, on his work trips.

This is not your everyday travel book. If you are looking for a laugh or a journey that is filled with misadventure and lessons learned, this book is for you.

I highly recommend this book and would give it five out of five stars. I think it is great for a laugh and a new look at travel. It is filled with life lessons and truths found along the way. Maybe getting lost isn't so bad.

Interesting topic and initially engaging. However, I ended up not finishing because the irreverent and sarcastic tone began to bother me and took over the book. For what it's worth, I don't often enjoy books by comedians either for the same reason.

"All Over the Place" is a travel book, except that the travel is at least as much internal as it is external. Geraldine DeRuiter has transformed her popular blog, The Everywhereist, into a book that chronicles her trajectory from unemployment to travel blogger to brain-tumor-survivor to someone who's come to understand her family, her marriage, and herself. Well, at least a little bit better than she did before.

As she freely admits at the beginning of the book, this isn't the kind of travel writing that explains to you how to save money in Sweden or avoid food poisoning in Fiji. Instead, it's the kind of travel writing where the trips serve as jumping-off points for musings on the meaning of life. If that sounds heavy, stuffy, or boring, it's not: DeRuiter's zany sense of humor comes bubbling out irrepressibly at every juncture, whether she's describing her mother's attempt to bring a pickax through airport security shortly after 9/11 (I may have cried a little during that scene, I laughed so hard), or the difficulties she and her husband face to preserve the happy state of their marriage under the pressure of her recovery from brain surgery and his inhumanly long work hours. There are also stories of her semi-successful attempts to understand her parents, both immigrants to the US, by returning to their original or adopted hometowns in Italy and Germany, as well as various alcohol-fueled bathroom mishaps in restaurants and hotels. Although the madcap adventures are presented in non-chronological order, the book's trajectory traces a gentle arc from 20-something Geraldine's neuroses to 30-something Geraldine's slightly calmer and more accepting approach to life, as she comes to the important realization that getting lost is not the worst thing that can happen to you, and sometimes it might take you where you really need to go. In turns heartwarming and hilarious, "All Over the Place" is one of the best travel books I've read in a long time.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a review copy of this book. All opinions are my own.