Ernest Hemingway – a famously avid traveller and explorer of other cultures and curiosities – once said that “there is no friend as loyal as a book”.
While I’d like to think my husband, is more loyal to me than a book, there is no denying that my love affair with books has been one of the most successful and long-lasting relationships in my life.
I love books and I treasure the act of reading stories. To do so easily and freely as we travel – as they are all stored on my Kindle – is one of my greatest pleasures. So perhaps yes, books are a more loyal companion to me and I am, in turn, more loyal to them.
With this in mind, I wanted to share five of my favourite books from recent years that I think are great love stories and great travel reading.
1. Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
An international bestseller, a Hollywood blockbuster film, you’d think that everyone has read Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, however, it’s still selling numerous copies, capturing imaginations and pulling heart strings today, ten years after its first publication. And it’s all about the coolest type of travel; time travel.
When our protagonists, Clare and Henry, meet she declares that she has known him all his life. He is bemused but ultimately clueless to the statement until a condition he is born with – Chrono Displacement, which brings about involuntary periods of time travel – takes him back in time to meet the six year old Clare.
The story follows Henry and Clare’s struggle with time travel – Henry with the unpredictability, Clare with the being left behind – but aside from the supernatural angle, some more tangible overarching themes emerge, including the valid question: What really makes a love everlasting?
2. Lovesong by Nikki Gemmell
Nikki Gemmell is one of my favourite authors, maybe because she often sets her books in both the UK and Australia, two countries I really love.
Lovesong is one of those stories, as it follows a young girl who escapes an unusual and traumatic childhood growing up in a cult by heading to the UK in search of adventure. Just like every young single girl whose heart is wide open to experience and change, Lillie is also looking for love; an all consuming, physical and spiritual love.
Well, love does arrive – after a few bumps and bruises – and it’s in the form of the mysterious Dan. They embark on another journey together, one threatened by twists and turns, including a dramatic return to Australia to face Lillie’s childhood demons.
The descriptions of both the UK and Australia in this novel is surprisingly real and compellingly accurate. The book does not end how you wish, hope or expect, however, it’s a journey well worth going on.
3. Love with a Chance of Drowning by Torre DeRoche
Torre DeRoche gave up her job, her home and her life in San Francisco to sail across the Pacific Ocean with a man she met in a bar.
A romantic gesture, but the chronic seasickness, the rickety boat and a very isolated environment in which her relationship must now grow doesn’t always make for smooth sailing.
This memoir is a warts and all story about the sink or swim moments that define a new love and is laced with vivid descriptions of the beautiful world that they explore in a truly unconventional way.
One of the most romantic elements of this story is how Torre, who also writes the blog Fearful Adventurer, originally self-published the book only for it to be snapped up by publishers across the world.
But did their love drown? You’ll have to read it to find out.
4. Loving Che by Ana Menendez
Loving Che takes the reader from Miami to Cuba and back again as a young woman explores the family mystery that is her mother, Teresa.
The narrator, who remains almost as mysterious as she isn’t given a name, was raised by her grandfather, a restrained but gentle man who has never answered her questions about the mother who stayed behind in Cuba during the revolution that she was sent away from.
The discovery of a package of letters and photos that appear to possibly relate to Teresa kickstarts the narrator’s own investigation and a journey to Cuba in search of answers to a potentially scandalous suggestion; that her mother had a passionate affair with the world’s most famous revolutionary, Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
The contents of the letters paint a vivid and sensual picture of the love affair and our narrator’s observations – good and bad – about Cuba and its history take the reader on a very fulfilling and romantic journey.
5. Until I Say Goodbye by Susan Spencer-Wendel & Bret Witter
A very different type of love is the focus of Until I Say Goodbye: My Year of Living with Joy as award winning Florida journalist Susan Spencer-Wendel shares a story that should be loaded with sadness but instead transpires to be a memoir full of encouragement and happiness.
For Susan has ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), a degenerative and incurable disease that is killing her muscles and will sadly end her life in just a few years. After entering a tunnel of denial about her prognosis she embarks on what she calls her “year of living with joy” in which she plans and shares special journeys across the world with those she loves most.
She goes to see the Northern Lights in Yukon, visits Budapest with her husband and travels to Cyprus to meet family members she only just finds out she has. Her act of treasuring travel and loved ones is an attempt to encourage her children to live with joy after she has gone, but the impact of the book is much wider as this can’t help but rub off on anyone who reads it.
Do you have any travel romance books you recommend? Let me know! I also wrote a list of my favourite travel books which you might also like to check out.
