Thank you to Wheelan's family for bringing us along on the family gap year we all wish we were brave enough to take!

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC for an honest review.

While fun and funny, it took me a while to finish this book. Maybe I'm not the right demographic? It skewed too family travelogue when I was expecting and hoping for something a bit more adventurous. I wanted insight into the nature of taking a break from the capitalist grind of career and school and American life generally and hitting the open road. One day, if/when I'm a father, perhaps I'll be more interested in how travel is experienced thru the eyes of the teenagers you're dragging along with you.

When I first saw this title, I knew I had to read this book. I love traveling and my husband and I talk about it frequently. The idea of traveling around the world for 9 months with several kids sounds terrifying, even after reading this book, but Wheelan allowed us such an insightful look into the ups and downs of doing just that.

Each chapter started out with a little catch phrase of what to expect later on in that same chapter. Some of them were shocking, some of them funny and it was interesting to follow along to see how he could’ve gotten himself into those situations. I liked how they did most of their traveling in countries that I myself have not visited and do not know much about. It was fascinating to see the similarities and differences to our own lives as well as how traveling this time around compared to the traveling they did as a much younger couple.

I very much enjoyed the humor that was sprinkled in throughout the whole book. It also contains a mix of really profound, beautiful sentences with really funny ones. Some of the situations left me cackling while others had me groaning, remembering my own struggles with immigration and government documents. While most of the book was fun and quick though, some of the passages in Germany did rub me a little wrong though. I am probably taking this a little too personal seeing as I am from there myself, but it has always struck me as ironic to hear somebody frowning about nationalism and soccer pride after having attended American football games and seeing flags on every imaginable surface, including underwear and bed sheets, as well as the shows of nationalism itself in the US. But if nothing else, that just shows that it is both necessary to travel around to learn a different perspective as well as understand that even doing that may not grant us all the insights we may expect.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoy a good travel journal narrative. Charles Wheelen packed up his family, which includes 3 teenagers, and took a 'gap year' to travel the world. Well written, easy to follow, but did bog a bit in the middle. Overall, a fun experience tagging along with this family's adventures. Thank you, Netgalley, for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review. 3.5 Stars

From South America to Australia, Vietnam to India, and so many more countries; Charles Wheelan takes us on a travel adventure with his family. Part travelogue and part memoir, Wheelan describes how him and his family are able to leave behind real life and travel for about 9 months at a time. He explains how he’s able to do so and even though it sounds so impossible, he makes it sound so easy! I love hearing about people’s experiences so I was intrigued how they made their travel plans and where they went. I even wrote down some places I’d want to go once travel is safe (ie: Rotorua, New Zeland famous for it’s hot springs).

Wheelan also offers insight on how him and his wife navigated these travels with three teenagers. He talks about how they managed to balance homeschooling and dealing with general parenthood challenges overseas. From normal family fights to flesh eating bacteria and exploding penis’ - this book covers it all. There is even a part where they are teaching their son CJ what consent means. I will admit that the home schooling parts bored me but I feel like parents would find the information useful or interesting. I do love that they took their kids traveling at such a young age and have such a passion for it as a family.


Thank you to Netgalley and to W. W. Norton and Company for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Equal parts memoir and travel journal, the author writes about the nine months that he, his wife, and his three teenagers left behind work, school, and the United States to travel around the world with a tight budget and very little on the agenda.
This idea very much appeals to me (although I’m not completely sold on traveling with my own three kids for so long) so I was excited to read about their experience traveling together.
It was delightful at first, as the family worked out all of the logistics of being gone so long, set their plans in place and got going. Especially enjoyable was reading about the family dynamics in play as they encountered various bumps in the road.
At about the 40% point, it really slowed down for me and started feeling more like a travel journal. I know many people like travel journals; I’m just not one of them. I pushed through, though, and found it picked up again for the last quarter of the book.
I will admit that reading this did find me adding more destinations to my bucket list and reeeeeally made me wish that travel was possible right now.
Thanks to #netgalley and #wwnortonandcompany for this ARC of #wecamewesawweleft in exchange for an honest review.

Fun and light hearted description of the families travel. Not terribly insightful, but would be fun to read on a trip perhaps.

We Came We Saw We Left by Charles Wheelan is a great book to read in a comfortable chair while you ask yourself: would I be able to travel with my three distinctly individual teenagers, and my wife, the budget keeper, to eight countries over nine months—and keep up with online learning? We Came We Saw We Left is an entertaining escape book that details the good and bad days of the trip. Readers who are considering such as adventure with a family of five or readers who want to learn about the experience will appreciate the Wheelan family through their adventures and meltdowns.

"I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own."
This captured the adventure of a family that was able to take a gap year together. It was an interesting concept and the book captured their experiences.

This book highlighted a family's 9-month trip around the world (in 2016) through South America, Asia, Africa, and eastern-Europe. Told by the father, the book reflects on their travels while providing information about how they made this trip possible as they navigated finances, schooling, etc. I loved the insight provided as he recounts the great experiences the family had traveling together while also sharing the experiences gone-wrong that required flexibility and sometimes led to complete family meltdowns! As a traveler, I found myself laughing quite a bit as I remembered my own travels that have been filled of both joyous, life-changing moments and frustrating, tear-filled disasters. Reading this makes me excited to explore more of the world after COVID!

Loved this book. Fun, witty, and insightful. I've already recommended it to a few friends and will be promoting it at book talks in Spring 2021. Greatly appreciated the honest accounts of traveling with family! And grateful for the chance to explore the world while stuck at home in a pandemic.

Imagine travelling in close quarters with your 3 teenage children for 9 months. Many are not brave enough to try but this is exactly what Charles and Leah Wheelan do. Not only an intriguing travel book but also a book about family and the strengths and weaknesses that pull us through when we work together. Were there glitches along the way? Almost always. But there was beauty and excitement as well as they experienced the beauty of Matchu Pichu and the Great Barrier Reef to the cities of Calcutta and Capetown. In these times of covid all we can do is dream about such a trip but one day........

Charles Wheeler and his wife took their three teenagers on a 9 month trip around the world and this is his travelogue/memoir of the trip. This appealed to me because I really enjoy travel writing, and also because, in these strange times, no one is traveling like this and who know when they can do so again? In addition to the glories of the Amazon and such amazing locales, Wheeler writes about the joys of traveling long distances by bus, the fun (haha) of homeschooling teens as they travel, the nitty-gritty of keeping to their travel budget--all sorts of details I would never have considered. If I were in Mr. Wheeler's family, I would be somewhat put out by the personal details he writes about, but I have to admit that these honest details make the book more interesting. I can appreciate the unique perspective the Wheelers and their children must have on the world and our place in it.

Thanks, Wheeler clan, for taking a trip like this, so I don't have to! Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a copy to review.

This was a very enchanting story of a trip around the world that I can only dream about. I love these sort of humorous travel stories, especially so far off the usual path of people from the western hemisphere. Find myself laughing quite a bit and could really feel like you could picture the family in all these scenarios. Really enjoyed this story!

Being cooped up during a quarantine has definitely made me long for the days of travel. Pre-pandemic, Craig Wheelan and his family put their lives on hold and spent a year traveling around the globe. No easy feat with three teenagers in tow. This memoir records their travels through South America, India, Europe and beyond and gave me some real fomo in terms of all of the amazing places they got to visit during their year away. However, when I pick up a travelogue, it’s because the destination that’s being written about is compelling, unique and interesting or the people in the book that I am on this adventure are the same. While the destinations were varied and compelling, I felt like I learned nothing new culturally about all of these places visited in the book. And unfortunately, the Wheelan family were just not the people I wanted to go adventuring with. I think the writer’s own place of privilege get in the way of the writing. (The use of bucolic twice within a three-page span was a turn off) and I’m sorry, but I lost trust the moment the family ditched their dog for a year in order to take this trip. Some family bonds are just too important to be broken.

In this travelogue, Charles Wheelen describes how he and his wife took sabbaticals from their teaching jobs for nine months, their eldest daughter delayed college for a year, and their two other teenage children left their in-person schools to do work online. So, two adults made the decision to travel with three teenagers in countries that require a slew of vaccinations. They made this decision while neither drunk nor high. I don’t get it either.

They were lucky they left when they did—at one stop, Charles assured their hosts there was no way Trump could become president, until a few months later, when he did. Oops. But the trip predated Covid, a trip they obviously couldn’t take if they’d delayed it. “Fortune favors those who get their passports and go.”

The thing about reading travel memoirs is that you can a learn about a place you’d like to visit someday, a place you’d like to learn about but have no desire to visit (the majority of places they traveled to fall in this category for me), or remembering places you enjoyed traveling to so you can see how it’s changed or just remember the trip yourself.

This could have been better. It definitely had opportunities to be funnier. The places I’ve traveled even in the United States where I speak the language is often filled with dumb errors like missed trains and misunderstandings, and that’s where a lot of chances for humor arise. It’s a pain in the butt at the time, but later, you can see your errors as funny and, ideally, illuminating. Almost all the humor in this book comes from when he reports the squabbling among the children—their dialogue is hilarious. It also made me so, so grateful I don’t have children that would become teenagers at some point. I don’t know how anyone survives that.

The other thing about traveling yourself or reading about it means that when you come home, you appreciate things America does well and what it could do better. In Bhutan, citizens must wear national dress in temples, schools, government offices, and on national holidays. “Imagine the government of the United States dictating what Americans are required to wear on in public on the Fourth of July.”

I enjoyed this. It’s worth the time. Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book, which RELEASES JANUARY 26, 2021.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book was around 3.5 stars for me.

It took a while to pick up in the beginning and I had a hard time finding a rhythm in the writing. While an experiment in a gap year as a traveling family there's not a whole lot about the places they visit. The anecdotes shared mostly focus on the family dynamics than actual locations. There's also some jumping around from story to story without much of a transition.

That being said there are some funny anecdotes I enjoyed. It's also an interesting perspective to hear from the author as they travel. I was hoping for some more travel-focused stories but they do talk a bit about the places they see.

Overall it's a unique take on the travel memoir that was an interesting read.

Loved this book!! Such a great look at family and travel. It’s real and raw and perfect. Definitely one to make you laugh and make you think.

Thank you #NetGalley and WW Norton and Company for the ARC copy of #WeCameWeSawWeLeft in return for a chance to review it.

Charlie Wheelan and his family do what others dream of: they take a year off to travel the world. This is their story.

What would happen if you quit your life for a year? In a pre-COVID-19 world, the Wheelan family decided to find out; leaving behind work, school, and even the family dogs to travel the world on a modest budget. Equal parts “how-to” and “how-not-to”—and with an eye toward a world emerging from a pandemic—We Came, We Saw, We Left is the insightful and often hilarious account of one family’s gap-year experiment.

Wheelan paints a picture of adventure and connectivity, juggling themes of local politics, global economics, and family dynamics while exploring answers to questions like: How do you sneak out of a Peruvian town that has been barricaded by the local army? And where can you get treatment for a flesh-eating bacteria your daughter picked up two continents ago? From Colombia to Cambodia, We Came, We Saw, We Left chronicles nine months across six continents with three teenagers. What could go wrong?

I absolutely loved this book! The author takes us on a journey with his family to 6 different continents in 9 months. The adventures he and his family have are beyond amazing and the stuff most of us can only dream about. The story is told with warmth and humor, and honest humility. I laughed aloud a few times as he describes the antics of his son CJ and his need to talk about absolutely everything. #explodingpenis. I shared his frustration with his daughter’s teenage obstinance and delay in finishing her schoolwork. I worried about his other daughter’s medical issue and celebrated her coming into her blooming adult independence. The sights and sounds the family encounters in all of the amazing places they visit are the backdrop of this book, but the heart and soul of this book is the family, extended family, and friends that all come together to make this a successful gap year. Wheelan makes me want to be a part of his family even through Leah’s tight budgeting and the not so amazing Airbnb accommodations. If you love to travel, if you have teenagers, if you are part of a family, or if you just need a good laugh— definitely gives this one a read, you will be glad you did.

A wonderful book full of insight and travel tips for those of us planning to take a gap year and travel the world. And, a funny and inspiring book for those of us who are not. "We Came, We Saw, We Left" dabbles into the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly of packing up your lives (with three kids and a few just along for the ride), and heading out into our great big world. For fans of travel books, as well as those who love a funny and light-hearted memoir, you won't be disappointed. The author's foray into climate change concerns, endangered animals, and teenagers being lost in a foreign country for hours on end, all add up to a highly recommended book that will leave you wanting to take your own similar adventure.