The synopsis of the book sounded like something I would enjoy reading. I was not impressed with it. It was a jumble of different trips, no cohesive organization. I keep wondering while I read what is the
Point? The summary of the book was misleading. This book was a complete miss for me.

As a fellow traveler, I really related to Suzanne Roberts' compelling stories! This is recommended for any other female travelers.

Whilst the anecdotes were interesting and mostly amusing, this could have been excerpts from my own travel experiences, minus the sexual conquests. I would not have brought this book if I had thumbed through it in a bookstore

Honest. Hilarious and heartbreaking. It was almost hard to read at some points following the love and life and travels of this author. But this book was captivating from beginning to end. Recommend. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I loved this book from the very first story which was laugh out loud funny!
I felt the book was very relatable and the places so well described that you could picture them.
During these times when we can't travel this book is a great escape, it is also a lovely story of self discovery and growing up through travel to wonderful places.
I would have preferred it to be in chronological order as I had to keep going back to the date to find out where she had been previously - it would have shown the reader how much she had grown in the time-line.
Saying that I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend.

This Book tells the story of the amazing places the author has been to via travelling, I enjoyed this book and it reminded me a bit of Eat, love, Pray

It also made me want to travel but due to covid restrictions I am unable to

I would recommend this book , with thanks to netgalley & university of Nebraska Publishing for the arc of this book in exchange for this review

I read a chapter of this before bed every night. I usually hate bed time because it means the day is over, but reading this book made me excited to go to bed because I could get another peek into an adventure of Suzanne Roberts. I just wish the first few chapters weren't about her love and romances. It pegged her as needy and not confident, which maybe she was at one time, but not a great first impression when this book was so much more than that.

It appears that these are just short stories of touring. The book started out so interesting but it shortly had me losing interest. I'm sure it's a great book, just not for me.

I love to travel and always enjoy discussing travel plans with other travellers - or even better swapping stories about some of our more unnerviing and life enhancing experiences. And so, it was with a sense of excitment that I opened the book, 'Bad Tourist' by Suzanne Roberts. A well-known travel writer, through a collection of essays, Roberts recounts her previous travels around the world from Peru to Africa to India.
The essay's are not told in chronological order but rather divided into several topics such as 'Sight's', Sleeping', Fesstivals and Specials Events' , the book does genuinely sound as a Roberts is about to embark on a detailed recollection of her travels and tell us about her expereinces along the way. Sadly, this did not prove to be the case; I had hoped to learn about her time in various countries, and while there are a few references to trains, mudslides to in Peru, the majority of her references are focused on her love-life - or lack thereof at the time. This book is more of a recollection about the men in her life and where she met them, rather than the places that they experienced together..
Roberts's attempts to find herself as she travels and indeed her eventual realisation that she does not need to be married to define herself, seems almost lost after all of the confusion that she has previously mentioned. Prehaps, an epilogue from the author to give a greater insight on her life and learnings now, would have added to the completion of the book. So much promise but in the end, I was truely disappointed by this book. I realise that the book will appeal to any, many other readers, I just prefer my travel memoirs to focus less on the author's life and more on the actual travel.

I had a little trouble getting into the book. But once I got last the first 20 pages or so, I felt that the books started to come into its own. I think the author found a rhythm and I really enjoined the book. I enjoyed hearing about her travels and the challenges that she experiences. I saw her personal growth throughput the story and I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys humor with their adventures

Bad Tourist is a memoir and collection of essays about the author's various travels around the world. This is a good book to read if you are missing traveling during the pandemic or have had to cancel trips. For me, the most enjoyable part of the book was reading about different countries and cultures. I felt like I was able to travel without even leaving my house.

However, the travel stories eventually became repetitive and superfluous in my opinion. I quickly tired of reading about love affairs in various countries and often cringeworthy encounters with locals and fellow travelers. The organization of the book was also hard to follow and didn't make sense to me.

“Travel is only glamorous in retrospect.” -Paul Theroux

A quote that I've never heard before but is perfect for this book and the nostalgic feeling for travel that it stirred in me. This collection of travel essays will make you cringe, laugh and shock you with its realness (that's a thing, right?) This is not a sort of travel guide that will advise you on the "must-see" sights of each place, but instead tells the story of Robert's journey into self acceptance and happiness.

The book is not structured in chronological order which, lent itself beautifully to Robert's chaotic emotions. Anyone who has an interest in travelling or has travelled themselves in any capacity will be able to relate to this on some level. It's terrifying, brilliant and brutally honest.

This really did not come across as a travelogue at all. In the description, it called it shamelessly funny. I didn;t find anything funny within any of the stories. "Fearlessly confessional" yes, it is that. It is that to an extreme degree at times. I felt at times that what I was reading was someone's diary about all the guys they'd hooked up with. Over and over. As if travelling made the random sex not count. What happens there, stays there. Often the stories seem as more cathartic for the author than actually providing a point to the reader. I kept wondering if there was more to the story that I missed. The choice to present the stories not in a chronological order would have been okay, however, it seemed as though they were meant to be organized more in themes. But in closer consideration, those stories never really supported those themes so then you are left to wonder what was the point?

Well, this isn't exactly a travel book, even if we do start with a landslide threat at the foot of Machu Picchu, the criminal beggars of India, and suchlike. It's not exactly a straight memoir either, but it is certainly an amalgam, something in between both extremes. It might also have been called "Eat, Vacay, F*ck", for we get copious drinks and meals out, lots of exotic locales, and a heck of a lot of horizontal tangoing. Basically the author was jumping around Latin America, allegedly trying to learn Spanish, but also trying to find her post-divorce self. This might have been fine if we had got a greater grip of the places concerned, but I felt that a little lacking, and as for the autobiography, hindsight and regret are slathered on so much it really does become a parade of 'methinks she doth protest too much' moments, when she comes to realise that condition-free shagging is a bad thing, before giving us ten more chapters of the same.

In the finish we do find some common ground with the ethos of the biographical writing. She clearly wishes she'd had more agency to pick and choose more select men, and she's fine on how a divorce proceedings and young middle age can put the idea in a woman's mind that she really ought to settle for the first dick to come around in case there are no others. But at the same time, the better travel writing is to be had in the isolated episodes later on, from Mongolia et al. The wacky timeline of this book of extended postcards also seems to imply that being a bit more discerning not only makes your self-worth greater, but heightens your ability at reporting. I don't think that's a standard perception of being chaste, but it's one you get from this oddball release.

Part memoir, part travel essays, this book really fascinated me. I was worried that it might be cheesy or a "preachy" in the way it addressed travelling to new places but Suzanne is so honest in her accounts of her travels, relationships and feelings about her own actions that it was hard not to be drawn in and empathise with many of the things that she goes through. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

Over the years, Suzanne takes us across continents, through multiple countries, introducing us to lovers, friends and family as she goes on a search. She seems to be searching for many things across her entries in this book - love, happiness, adventure, herself. On her journey, she is confronted with the realities of the world and is forced to challenge her own perspective of things, trying to overcome the label of "bad tourist".

"The misadventures of love and adventure" really take you on a rollercoaster of emotions. There are moments of laugh-out-loud hilarity, nail-biting panic and heartbreaking realisations. It is a lovely balance of self-discovery and recalling new cultural experience - a wonderful distraction from the current restrictions on travelling and being close to others. I related to Suzanne in many ways and found myself cheering for her throughout my read.

I really enjoyed this. Suzanne Roberts has written with genuineness and brutal honesty about a life of travel compounded by her deeply intimate thoughts about her personal life. She addresses issues around residual colonialism and white saviourism without lecturing, and refuses to express any shame for the choices she makes, even where they are imperfect. I loved that, it felt very brave.

There were moments when I laughed out loud, and there were also moments where I thought 'wow, never thought about it like that before'. I really do recommend this to any woman who likes to travel, with all of its dangers and highlights— and anyone who's ever found themselves in the mess of a personal life in shambles.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of Bad Tourist by Suzanne Roberts.

This is a travelogue memoir of all of the mishaps and adventures that Roberts has throughout her years abroad. In it she experiences natural disasters, awkward confrontations, romance and more.

I'm going to chalk my review up to a simple personality clash. I just could not do this one. The chapters all felt a bit disjointed. I never felt myself connecting to the author, or investing in her experiences. I didn't like the way she treated a lot of the people she encountered on her trips, or the way she almost seemed to brag about it. Perhaps this was just too crass for me? And that's saying a lot.

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

This book was around 3.5 stars for me.

I like Robert's writing style and generally enjoyed her anecdotes about traveling. I appreciate that she reflects on her experiences and growth and being the "ugly American" abroad. There's a variety of anecdotes in this book from one-night stands while vacationing to trying yoga in India.

While the stories aren't in chronological order, we see Roberts' growth and her confidence in herself change. This book deals with boundaries and fear and figuring out what you want. The first two thirds of the book have a much lighter tone than the last third. But we learn life lessons along with Roberts' and experience travel both internationally and within the US!

I love travel books, but I had a hard time getting into this one. The author skips back and forth between a variety of far flung locations, with no apparent narrative connecting the essays. She visits interesting places I would like to know more about, but she is preoccupied with her sex life.

The material this book is based on could have resulted in a really good book, but this just didn't work for me.

I had a challenging time with this essay collection. As positives, I do want to praise the writer's prose. The writer is clearly talented, and I can tell that these essays have a wonderful craft element; the writing is careful, considered, and fresh. As is the case with good essays, the writer does use retrospection and introspection to learn about herself, come to new conclusions, and dissect her past behaviors. However, I feel that as a narrator, she is not the best person to tell these bigger-picture stories on the travel industry, in part because her analysis doesn't go far enough; it's no longer enough to condemn being a "bad" tourist in that she becomes aware of her past microaggressions or privileged mindset. The interrogations don't feel deep enough, and I found myself wishing that some of the people written about (the low wage workers, the children begging for money, the sex workers, and so on) were the ones who had a book deal and a voice to tell their side of "bad" tourism. Of course, as a nonfiction writer, I know the writer can't change her experiences or privilege, but that brings about the point that I don't think this essay collection delves into territory that goes far enough to feel "needed." I think it may be eye-opening for some, but wasn't a fit for me.