I do always love a good travel memoir and a bout of bookish travel, so I was immediately drawn to One Year And A One-Way Ticket. I did some solo traveling as well when I was younger, although it was in Latin America instead of Asia... And I've been looking forward to revive these old memories while also experiencing a continent I don't get to visit too often during my bookish travels. I have to say that this turned out to be a more than solid and enjoyable memoir slash travelogue!

One Year And A One-Way Ticket focuses on Danika Smith's travel experiences when she decided to take a year off to travel after a vet school rejection in 2018. This memoir uses a linear structure and is divided by country, which really enhanced the story for me as it feels like you travel right along with the author. Her travels take you to multiple countries in Asia and Europe, although I personally did prefer the Asian chapters as the descriptions of the different destinations were simply more vivid and thorough. Especially the chapters set in Nepal stood out, although I did enjoy them in general. I do wish the photos would have been in color though!

The European chapters didn't quite hit the same for me... I visited multiple destinations myself in the past, and the descriptions of the different places could have been a bit longer and thorough. As a result, there were a lot of places that didn't really come alive for me... But this might also have had to do with the focus on the author's toxic relationship with Evan instead of the places they visit. I really do wish the whole part focusing on Evan would have been left out; not only was it repetitive, but it was also a distraction from the traveling itself.

What I did enjoy were the descriptions of the instant connections that happen often while you are traveling, which is something I have experienced myself as well. Meeting people from all over the world and learning about their lives and culture is one of the things I love about traveling, and this was definitely well portrayed in this memoir. The writing itself was easy to follow and engaging enough to keep turning the pages. Like I said, I would have loved more focus on the traveling itself and less on reflection and life lessons learned, but this is probably just a personal preference.

One Year And A One-Way Ticket turned out to be an engaging travelogue that takes you on a tour through Asia as well as a trip to Europe. It shows you both what it is like to solo travel and some of the ups and downs you could encounter along the way... And it definitely made me want to dust off my trusty backpack (a.k.a. the green monster) and plan another trip myself.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atmosphere Press for this ARC.

Canadian Danika Smith, 23, decides to travel the world for a year after being rejected by vet school. This is her travelogue, concentrating mainly on parts of Asia (Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia).

She's travelling through parts of Europe as well (Germany, Switzerland and Spain), but it feels oddly bloodless. While the Asian countries are described in luminous colours, she only stays in Barcelona for two days and doesn't write a word about this magnificent city with its amazing art and architecture, instead we get a lot of agonising over a waste of space called Evan.

I did like the travel descriptions and especially how she connects with people around her, however I do think the writing style is telling rather than showing, always spoonfeeding us how she's feeling and what she's learned. She sounds like a very naive 23 year old at the beginning, and at the end she sounds like a marginally less naive 24 year old who has caught the travel bug and learned about herself.

What I've learned is that you need to be young, healthy and fit, eat anything, like spicy food, not be afraid of unsanitary lodgings, not care about lost phones, be prepared to be flexible, use Workaway jobs to get round without spending too much money, and need no medication that could run out.

So if you like reading about others travelling and sharing their experiences, this is for you. It's interesting enough to wile away a few hours reading about exotic destinations and young people gap yearing their way through them, and it's a lot more real and less overblown than Eat, Pray, Love.

3.5 stars

"I’d rather be terrified of failure in a world full of opportunity than caged within a fence, living out someone else’s wishes just to avoid fear.”

Danika Smith stopped the figurative merry-go-round of ‘growing up and getting a job’ and gave herself time to contemplate whether she was making decisions for herself or if she was following a path blindly. A rejection letter from a vet school may have been a blessing in disguise for this 23-year-old. Danika felt like there was more to life than what she was doing and knew she needed some space away from everything familiar.

She took a year off, booked a one-way ticket to Sri Lanka, and traveled relying solely on ‘Couchsurfing’ and ‘Workaway’ websites for her accommodation and extra income.

Danika didn’t just survive her year abroad, she thrived.

Her debut memoir is filled with thought-provoking insight as well as courageous and sometimes risky endeavors. Her growth is evident in each experience and she doesn’t shy away from admitting her mistakes.

Danika constantly addresses her fears, both emotionally and physically. It becomes a yardstick to measure her growth, for both the reader and for Danika.

“Fear of the world around us can hold us back, whether it’s crossing the street or finding the courage to speak our truth. I was fenced into the idea that I needed to commit to a career that would make my mother proud for years. If I had gotten into vet school and managed to land a high-paying career, would I have been really satisfied?”

Danika addresses what it means to be happy.

In Chandrawati, she learns that “fulfillment in life seems less dependent on monetary wealth than it is on finding happiness in everyday life and sharing that joy and love with the people around us.” She examines the link between her happiness/fulfillment and community. Before travelling abroad, she believed that being successful would make her happy. If she could only get into vet school and get a high-paying job, she’d be successful. Individual effort and drive were how she measured success. However, Dankika learns what it means to live as a community and to be caring and generous to strangers; these are the new measuring sticks of success, happiness and satisfaction. It’s in learning to work together and sharing the results that bring satisfaction, not competing to succeed.

I was in awe of Danika sharing some things she lived with in order to achieve success:
💜Negotiating a meal in a stranger’s home
💜Living in a mud hut with rats
💜Eating dhal bhat for days on end
💜Backaches and trembling knees
💜Dog bites

Both candid and inspiring, this memoir is one I’ll be thinking about for a long time. I hope there's another book in the works! I loved her writing style and her openness.

⚠️ references to rape, open-door intimacy, occasional swearing

I was gifted this copy by Atmosphere Press and NetGalley and was under no obligation to provide a review.

This book is easy to read and flows nicely. I enjoy that it is light hearted and the author reflects on her travels. Numerous times while reading, I found myself remembering similar experiences from my own travels. It feels relatable to travelers and aspiring to non-travelers.

Traditional format (digital). Release date: March 11, 2025

One Year and a One Way Ticket is a biography/memoir about Danika Smith. The 23 year old Canadian was rejected acceptance to veterinary school so bought a one way ticket to Sri Lanka and spent a year travelling through Europe and Asia. Smith did the year spending as little money as possible so she spent her time staying in hostels, working in exchange for accommodation and couch surfacing.

This was an easy read. I enjoyed all the stories from the different places she stayed and she brought the regions and people to life. While a lot of the book was biographical and a travelogue I enjoyed how the memoir elements were woven in nicely. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves to travel and read books about different regions and those single (women) or low budget travelers who want to see the world.

I enjoyed this book and I give this book a 4.5/5! The only thing preventing me from giving this a full five stars is that I found several times in the book the writing/style was a little awkward (that's the best way I can describe it) which is typical for memoirs in my experience. For example choppy in parts with short sentences and then into longer sentences so it lost the flow when I was reading. I also lost track of the time/days that she spent in each place and would have loved to have this info in the chapter headers or pages where it shows the maps she travelled so you could see how much time was spent in each region that the book was broken down into (this was not at least in the e-copy I read).

Thank you to Atmosphere Press and Net Galley for a digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!