Unfortunately, I could not get into this one. I was super intrigued by the pitch but it didn't grab me like I was hoping and I ended up not finishing it. It was quite a long book for a "rom-com" and it felt like it could have been significantly edited to be shorter. I did appreciate all of the travel locations – books in locations that are not my own always give me the itch to travel and see new places.

It wasn't a fit for me, but might be a fit for someone else.

Dnf. the writing in this book was in shambles, I couldn’t finish. There are so many similar romances with 100x better writing and execution.

If you're looking for a book that takes you on the trip of a lifetime recreating a famous adventure from a book...this is your read.

It is a slow, slow, burn as the focus seems to be on the romance blooming from the travel, visits to different cities, the adventure from port to port, and the discovery that you can do hard things.

While a traumatic incident in Ramona's past is the reason she's never set out like this, she will discover that if she can trust not everyone is out to ruin her despite appearances.

Who is Jonah Dross? How will they navigate the job offer? Who will win? So much on the line and so much adventure to be had.

Eighty Days to Elsewhere by K.C.Dyer is billed as The Amazing Race meets Around the World in Eighty Days. I might throw in a little Eat, Pray, Love as long as we are comparing it to other works. With or without the comparisons, this 2020 book, the first in a series of two so far, is a hidden gem. Maybe it was talked about in 2020 and I just missed it with all the craziness around, but I am glad it was on my shelf and I am glad I picked it up to read now.
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I loved it. I really like Le the premise. A young woman is desperate to earn some money to save her uncles’ bookstore and jumps at an opportunity to work for Exlibris Expeditions, a boutique travel agency that specializes in literary based trips. As a trial, Romy must recreate Phileas Fogg’s journey around the world from Jules Vern’s classic book and make notes of stops, sites and people along the way in order to plan a contemporary adventure for a client.
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Romy has never traveled even out of New York City, no commercial airlines may be used, she must check in and file regular reports even in remote areas, and, oh, she has competition for the permanent job and bonus for completing the trip. That competition just happens to be the nephew of the horrible man threatening her uncles’ shop.
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Of course the trip doesn’t go smoothly, but it does have wonderful moments and I thoroughly enjoyed the entire trip! The people Romy encountered, the places she visited and even how she got there were a delight to read about.
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This was probably one of the most interesting books that I have read in a long time. It is lighthearted with romance and humor. A fun escape. 3.5 Stars

Whew. This was a long one, but had a lot of things I liked. Ramona works at a bookshop with her uncles, but has to find a new job. She applies for one with a literary travel agency and has to prove herself by traveling around the world Jules Verne style - no commercial aircraft - and write about it for the agency. I really liked the travel aspect of this, but did think it was a bit of a whirlwind as Ramona was mainly focused on the transportation and speed of getting from place to place and not so much on seeing the sights.

I did appreciate that Ramona grew a ton throughout this story because I think that is one very real outcome of travel. Seeing different cultures and peoples really does provide a new perspective. However, I do think the author tried to do too much and the book started to feel like an issues book. It almost felt like there was a checklist of different issues to include and it all just became too much for my tastes.

I didn't mind the romance, but also didn't think it was necessary so I'm glad it was a minor part of the story.

Overall I think this was a fun read, until the issues just became a bit unbelievable and forced.

There’s no better way to travel around the world right now than with Romy on her adventures in Eighty Days to Elsewhere. Romy begins the novel as a clerk in her uncles’ bookshop in New York City – a city she hasn’t traveled outside of in more than a decade. But when the bookshop rent is raised significantly, Romy begins a journey that will take her on a wild ride around the world in order to beat her competition, land a new job, and receive the prize money that will save her uncles’ shop.

I enjoyed watching Romy grow as a person every step of the way during her journey. As she meets challenges along the way – and overcomes them – she realizes she has much more strength within herself than she ever knew. With this comes an inner confidence that carries her through other hard times she faces later in the story. It’s lovely to watch it unfold.

The romance takes a backseat in this story, but you still get glimpses of it along the way. And the HEA more than makes up for it!

I think my favorite part of Eighty Days to Elsewhere is the wonderful, vivid descriptions of each locale that Romy visits. Dyer’s writing made me feel as if I was running through the streets of India, climbing the hillside in Hong Kong, and sailing the seas with them. One night I put the book down exhausted from my travels! Ha! That’s how you know it’s powerful writing!

I had so much fun traveling with Romy!

I was really excited about the premise of this book after reading the synopsis - travel, books, and a hint of romance? I'm in! But this just ended up missing the mark for me. I didn't realize when I began reading how long the book actually was - it went into so much detail about each place that I found myself zoning out and not wanting to pick it back up and keep reading. Overall, I thought the plot was great but it just went on a little too long and I didn't find myself connecting with the characters at all. Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC!

If you’re not going on vacation but wish you were this may be a great alternative because the writing truly transports you around the world.

Actual rating: 2.5 stars

I was hoping EIGHTY DAYS TO ELSEWHERE would sweep me off my feet and take me on an epic adventure to give me an escape during the pandemic, but it ended up feeling like a bit much for me while still leaving me wanting.

I loved the idea of "The Amazing Race" meets AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS. I was also excited about the idea of our heroine doing it all to help save her family's bookstore. However, as the trip around the world unfolds, so much goes wrong every step of the way that the story lost a lot of its appeal. I found myself rolling my eyes when chaos ensued AGAIN and AGAIN. This book is pretty long but still managed to feel too jampacked.

As for Romy and Dominic, I felt pretty 'meh' about them overall. I liked seeing a bit of growth in Romy, but she was also super naïve. I enjoyed when we got to see the softer, caring side of Dominic, but I didn't feel much else for him or their relationship.

Some readers may like EIGHTY DAYS TO ELSEWHERE if they've got the itch to travel and want to live vicariously through the pages of a book, but this was just wasn't a great read for me.

Ok. If a book’s synopsis mentions one of my favorite reality TV shows, The Amazing Race, it’s pretty safe to assume that I need that book. Really, I need any book that involves travel and this one also includes a heroine with a love of books who goes on a trip that retraces the steps of Around the World In 80 Days by Jules Verne. The only thing that annoyed me about this book is that I didn’t read it sooner. I. Loved. It.

This book is very very long, and it needs to be because a journey around the world deserves some time to flesh it all out in great detail. K.C. Dyer does just that. Every location and experience is told in such vivid detail that I felt like I was there. I could smell the mustiness of the Paris Catacombs, feel the ships bobbing over waves, and see the bright lights of Hong Kong. It was such a wonderful adventure, filled with characters that were so memorable and endearing.

Romy has a lot of fear and anxiety surrounding travel, and it’s held her back in her life before. But she’s doing this for something larger than her fear. Her sweet, sweet uncles (I honestly loved them) have run a bookstore for ages, and the new landlord is raising the rent exponentially in order to try and force them out. While out moping about an unknown future, Romy spots an ad for a company that plans extravagant literary journeys inspired by books. They’re looking to hire someone, and Romy wants to do this to make enough money to save the bookstore. After a lackluster interview, the job is given to someone else. Romy won’t take no for an answer and decides to fight back. She runs into that office and begs for the opportunity (it reminded me of when Andy fights against Miranda Priestley’s brush-off in The Devil Wears Prada). So the competition is born! The boss lady, Teresa, decides to give Romy a shot and allows her to race against the other job candidate. Whoever makes it back to the ExLibris office first gets the job.

The journey starts out with Romy on her own, not having any idea who this other mysterious job candidate is. As the synopsis mentions, travel methods cannot include commercial airlines. I loved Romy’s creativity. She books passage on things like container ships, shipping vessels, a funicular, a helicopter, trains, rickshaws, a party bus, and even a raft at one point. I loved reading about her experiences and the people she met. During her journey she stumbles across Dominic and it’s revealed that he’s her competition. He’s also the “evil Nephew” of her uncles’ new landlord. They’re forced to join forces when travel options become limited. Their journey also becomes more than simply winning a job when they both become invested in helping an orphaned 14-year-old Somali refugee named Sumaya find her family in another country. I grew very attached to Sumaya. She’s been through so much pain and fear, yet she’s a bundle of pure joy. Everything makes her so happy. Her dream is to be a stand-up comedian, and she spends a lot of her journey with Romy and Dom testing her comedy routines out on fellow travelers, crew members, local people, and others helping them on their way. The addition of Sumaya to their travel plans makes things complicated and scary at times because she had no papers, but she was worth it to them to take that risk and I loved that. Throughout their journey (haha I sound like a writer for The Bachelor), Romy and Dom start to feel things for one another. The romance is there, but very understated. If travel is involved, I don’t mind at all sacrificing some of the romance for travel so I loved it. It’s worth mentioning, though, that there is a very romantic ending and I was completely satisfied.

Both Dom and Romy learn so much about themselves and the world, which is one of my favorite things about traveling. I absolutely loved reading about the places they saw, the people they met, and how this experience changed them for the better. I loved reading about the kindness of complete strangers they met as they traveled. These people made sacrifices and put themselves in danger to help them, oftentimes not asking for anything in return. This book reminded me that most humans are good people, and that life is made better when you help others and allow others to help you.

All in all, Eighty Days to Elsewhere is touching, eye opening, heartwarming, funny, and subtly romantic. It also sheds light on some important issues around the world. I had the hardest time putting this book down, and found so much joy in returning to it each evening to continue my adventure around the world. I can’t wait to read the next book in this series, An Accidental Odyssey, which came out last month!

This is one of those books that I just couldn't get into. I wanted to, because I have liked the books from the author before. However, this one just wasn't my thing. It may have been the timing of when I read it.

I wanted to like this! Truly, I did! The premise sounds so perfect, but the execution fell short. I ended up abandoning it because I just couldn't take anymore. I didn't connect with the characters, it dragged, and I didn't love the writing style. It was a wonderful idea that didn't see the follow through.

In more of my wrapping up old NetGalley arcs project, thanks to them and the publisher for gifting me a copy back in August 2020.

As much as I enjoyed Finding Frasier, this book was annoying and at times downright unbearable. Clocking in at 480 pages, I felt this book would have benefited from a more thorough editing process to get it down 100 pages less-which would have removed some of the monotony as well.

I love the general idea-having a travel agency specifically for recreating literary book travels, I mean who wouldn't want to do that?! But then the story became bogged down in the enemies to lovers trope that was actually kind of badly done in and of itself. And now the enemies are competing for the same job! Dun dun duuuuuun. And obviously wackiness happens because why not? But Romy is so caught up in Dom being the bad guy that she can't realize she messed up certain events-such as the switching of the visas and getting off the damn train! I mean, are you serious?! I was so mad at that point I had to walk away.

And the next thing that set me over the edge was Romy and being aware of things in the world. For example, she has two gay uncles (who run the book store with the best name ever: Two Old Queens or something like that) and she is hellbent on correcting Dom when he labels them as gay. But she can't open her eyes to see why using a hashtag about refugees on a ship she is on might be seen in a negative light? I know I know, character development, but it felt forced and un-fluid. Romy also has to be told to basically check her privilege and she pulls the whitest card ever "I don't have privilege, I've struggled!" without really trying to understand why she is wrong. Because of her CD she does eventually understand and stays in her lane the next time a similar-ish situation arises, so yay her? But at the end of the book, we find out that the bestest friend she has who is so super smart she is working on dissertation #2 is a black woman. I honestly wonder if the following line was removed from the book "My best friend is black so I can't be racist!"

But, what really just did me in was the readers were cheated! Yes I know Romy and Dom were under the wire to finish this expedition in a certain amount of time, but damn, we glossed over sooo much of what could have been richer moments...to give us a campy romance. Why can't they have just been friends! To me, the best part of the expedition was the train ride in India with the Auntie knitting and the mom with her baby. That felt the realest.

Anyway, I'm glad I read it, I wished I liked it better. I'm glad it had a happy ending, but sigh. I don't know, just a let down.

Romy's cozy existence in her uncles' bookshop is about to come to a screeching halt, when the new landlord hikes up the rent and makes it nearly impossible for the bookshop to survive. In order to save the bookshop, Romy applies for a job at ExLibris Expeditions, a company that plots literary journeys so adventurers can retrace the footsteps of the literary past. Sounds great, right? Absolutely. Until Around the World in 80 Days becomes the subject of Romy's client's travel obsession - one she's not sure she can pull off. But she's got competition - and nothing fuels a girl like competition, right? With romance and hijinks, this book is a cute and breezy read!

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkeley for advance access to this title!

If you are missing travelling, this is the perfect for you. I really enjoyed that aspect of this book and all the adventures Romy went on. I was hoping for a little more romance in this book, but over all it was a fun romp!

So I read like 40% of this book last summer, but I never ended up finishing this after getting a new Kindle for my birthday - downloading it to finish just didn’t seem to be worth the trouble. When I saw it on audio from my library, I went back to it. This was fine - I wanted to like it a lot more that I did.

I'm not really sure how to rate or review this book. On one hand, I did like the character arc that our main character Romy went through and I loved seeing all of the destinations that she hit throughout her adventure. But on the other hand, this was disappointing on so many levels.

I was expecting this to be a fun romance, but this was anything but. I feel like the author tried to make this book a lot more than it had to be. While I can appreciate the discussions about racism, activism, and refugees, coming from a white author, it felt a little weird. They also felt a little out of place in the story, as if the author was just including those topics to get brownie points or whatever.

There was also not that much romance, for a book marketed as such. While I enjoyed the plot-driven narrative and all of Romy's misadventures, I was in it for the romance and it only kicked in in the last third of the book. And even then, I didn't feel the romantic chemistry between the two characters.

I have mixed feelings about this book, which is a comedy of errors about traveling the world without money, resources, or experience.

Ramona, the protagonist, is desperate to save her uncles' bookshop in New York City when she finds a paper advertisement for a job that involves traveling. Without any travel experience (she's never traveled), she convinces the CEO to give her the job and embarks on a chaotic, worldwide tour. Romantic tension builds on the trip as she encounters the Evil Nephew of the man threatening to evict her uncles from their space.

The tone is a little more slapstick than I personally appreciate, although I did enjoy the hijinks to a certain extent. The mishaps are extravagant and difficult to believe, even if they did amuse me.

Overall, this book isn't for me, but someone looking for a lighthearted, comedy of errors romantic adventure might enjoy this.

First I must say this book was destined for me. I am a travel advisor and I plan literary journeys at Journeys by the Book. So, the fact that the story of Ramona Keene following the path of Phileas Fogg from Around the World in Eighty Days appealed on so many levels! Romy embarks on the trip as a way to save her uncle's book store from a new landlord and his Evil Nephew/Dominic, but along the way she grows as a woman, citizen of the world, and is challenged in so many ways that there's no turning back. It was sheer pleasure to read about travel right now, with COVID keeping us stuck at home. The author's descriptions of the various stops Romy makes were spot on, especially Hong Kong. I recall when I was there I saw the masses of women all "picnicking" in town and had no idea what they were doing. As the author explains, it's the "maid's day off" and there only time to get together. The character of Sumaya was delighful and you will find yourself cheering on Romy as romance sparks with Dominic who turns up on the worldwide trip. Pick up this book as we shelter in place and explore the world through the pages of this delightful tale. Thank you to the author and publisher for the ARC. #EightyDaytoElsewhere #NetGalley