This book was phenomenal. I ate it up so fast. I really related to everything this author wrote about. It was beautiful.

The Same River Twice by Pam Mandel
Rating 3.75/5 Stars
Published by Skyhorse
Published on 3 November 2020

Thank you to Netgalley, Skyhorse, and of course, Pam Mandel, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What happens when we stop saying No and start saying Yes? Well, Pam is about to find out. Given the choice, she would stay where she is comfortable. So why not change that? With no guidance or no plan, Mandel starts saying yes to everything and everyone and begins an adventure that takes her across three continents - from London to Pakistan - to California. This book is one of the reasons I love travel writing as a genre - it is so immersive and necessary for the world we have lived in the past 18 months. I love to travel, and not being able to - I’ve turned to books to feed that hunger. Pam does a great job of describing her travels and I found this a beautiful way to encapsulate growing up and becoming who you want to be.

This is such a relatable memoir (except for the traveling part!). Every person in their late teens/early twenties goes through the journey to discover their place in the world. The author captured this precious time in her life and made it not only relatable, but an interesting read.

This book captures well the confusion and uncertainty of people in their late teens and early twenties. For the author, this takes place against the backdrop of travel and locations in the Middle East and Europe. I found this book highly relatable because she is my approximate age. Her experiences were immersive and often approached with a western naivety. She didn’t realize she was in dangerous situations until after the fact.

She comes from an unstable home life which may have contributed to her inability to disentangle herself from an abusive relationship. I kept rooting for her to leave him behind as easily as she did the countries she visited, but she lacked the tools and it was a different time.

The early eighties was an extremely volatile time in many of the areas she traveled, and it was interesting to see how matter-of-factly residents dealt with disruptions like needing to take shelter from bombs.

I was also struck by how generous people were with their own limited resources.

I received this Advanced Reader Copy of Same River Twice from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

#TheSameRiverTwice #NetGalley

Great travel memoir to read while you're stuck at home! Pam Mandel was so brave and I appreciated her honesty in telling the story!

In the 1st place the book seems interesting for me to read because it is about backpacking life lessons .

Her story started from become a volunteer in Israel and as the story goes , shit keep on happened along her journeys. I feel bad while reading her story and really depressing . But, at the same time I felt that there some part she is so naive and turning out that most of her decision lead to bad decision and makes her journey more worst. Especially , when she met Alastair who an abusive boyfriend but she still went travelling and continue her journey with him. And , I feel bad for her that her parents end up divorced.

To be honest , I nearly DNF the book because I just can’t accept the shits that she going through and all the bad decision that she make which end up hurting herself . But, I keep on going to know what her journeys will taught her in the end . Glad that she back at her hometown and find the journey gave her biggest life lessons and she really know what she worth for .

Lesson learnt :
- Travelling in backpackers we need to know all the information about the countries that we will visiting to avoid any bad things happen such as scam , violence , meet abusive people , thief etc.
- Don’t to naive and trust people easily.
- Each country have different rules , regulations and culture . Therefore , we need to be observant and make sure you have full of information regarding the country that you will be visiting .
- Before travelling make sure to always have plan A , B or C or so on. It is because not journey will become a perfect journey : actually no perfect journey but atleast we have plan not a last minute plan.

Thanks to Netgalley for the e-ARC in return with honest review .

P/s : just a small sharing from me - Travelling / backpacking totally one of a good way for us to know the world , to know how the life actually are, to make us out of our comfort zone , taught us to be strong , learn something new , meet people and culture, and of course through travelling/backpacking make us know ourself better and make us to become a better person than before.

This was a very well written and interesting story of the authors search to find herself and what she wanted in life.
Having grown up in a chaotic household, where her parents ended up divorcing and she felt she was not really wanted at either ones home, as they didn't seem to have time for her. Her grades started to fail, although she was very smart and loved to read, and was good at languages. she was just living a life that got her nowhere, with no guidance, she accepts a trip when her father sends her on a youth tour group in Israel
At seventeen and rather naive in life, as she never really learned how to stand up for herself, she made bad choice after bad choice of the people she met.
From working on various kibbutz, to going through various boyfriends, learning to speak the language and then on to adventures with an abusive boyfriend for months across Europe, Greece and India.
She loved going to places she had read about, and meeting the people one on one. Eventually she moves back to the USA, after her travels have finally made her see what she is really worth.
Wonderful Memoir of that time in her life. I would definitely read more by this author.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Skyhorse Publishing for a copy of this book.

This is the story of a young american girl who seeks direction and wants to understand life better and in her attempts to do so packs her bags, moves to another country, trying to get her life together while navigating adolescence, relationships and her own belief systems. The narration was good but it wasn't a page turner for me.

Right now, I feel so travelsick that I just had to find a way to know other places, even if it’s through words. And, because of that, I felt somehow deceived for more than half of the book.
Don’t get me wrong. I felt for Pam and her bad relationships (especially with ~that guy), but I just wish I knew what I was getting into beforehand. And I didn’t. From the beginning until more than half of the book, she goes from Cali to a sort of student exchange program and goes on and on about boyfriends, self-pity, and her family troubles.
In the last part, when she goes backpacking, it gets a bit better, but I think I’d probably have dropped before that if it wasn’t for the review.

A wonderfully written memoir on changing locations and conceptions of self and womanhood. The author traverses different areas and effortlessly incorporates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rape culture, and many other social issues into the patchwork of this book.

Great book! really enjoyed this one. Talks about tough topics such as family, relationships, and politics. We learned about Mendel's life and travels and they were quite interesting. She is also a great writer, I would recommend this one. Thank you to the publisher and to netgalley for the advanced copy!

a Jewish girl in the 70's trying to find herself through drugs and quirky friends goes to Israel for Kibbutz and has a boyfriend she really shouldn't have stuck with. i love memoirs and travel but did not really care for this author.

Pam Mandel is a great writer, both about travel adventures (and misadventures) and bad relationships. This was a more serious book than I was expecting, but I think it was better for it.

All though the descriptions of places and cultures were interesting I didn't enjoy reading about the abuse the main character endured from her boyfriend chapter after chapter with no end in sight. All though she was young and didn't have much money I found it hard to believe she could stay in this relationship and not ask for help. I did not relate to the fact she felt she deserved it and there must have been something wrong with her as she decided no one cared about her.

Pam Mandel's father ships her off to Israel She would endure any pain, to feels ALIVE and seen by others! Enduring violence, becoming ill, going hungry, abused by those on the tour...crossing three Continents. What an incredible memoir and journey of this young woman, through life's hard lessons!. It shaped who she became in life!
I highly recommend this book!

Such a great book. You will enjoy the adventure and wildness of all the places described. It takes a few chapters to really dig into it but definitely worth the wait.