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A review by mslenakay
The Travel Auction by Mark Green
4.0
Reading The Travel Auction made me feel as if I was going on a journey to South America along with JC and Angel. I was so attached to the characters and the story that it was hard for me to believe that they were not real people and that this story didn't really happen. Mark Green writes in the voice of both JC and Angel and does a very good job of it. He was able to make them have two distinct personalities and was very good at writing in the narrative of a woman. The Travel Auction reads as if JC and Angel both kept diaries and Mark Green took those diaries to tell their story. The fact that it's all fiction is astonishing and amazing.
I was pleasantly surprised when I read this book. When I finished the book and realized it was inspired by seeing a blind woman climb Machu Picchu I was very surprised. The way this was written had me convinced that it had been based off real events, more than just one event. Knowing this all came from Green's mind is incredible.
I very much enjoyed this book, but I hesitate giving it 5 stars because I felt there were loose ends with the email Angel's husband (ex-husband?) sent about new technology for getting vision back. It would have been interesting to see her take on it, whether she would want her vision back or not. I also thought the sex on the beach (literally) could have been done a bit more tastefully. I don't care that it was on a beach, but to just do that in front of so many people so publicly isn't romantic in any sense of the word. That part took away from the characters for me, it seemed too unreal compared to other events of the story and other character traits. That part just didn't work for me.
What I really did appreciate was that their looks weren't important and it was all about who they were as people, because that's what life is really about. So many books describe everyone as good looking and attractive and that gets a lot of mention, but other than one or two people saying how JC looked, without giving away too many detailed description, there was very little focus on their looks, which I really found wonderful.
I definitely recommend this book as I think it can teach us a lot about how we view people in general.
I was pleasantly surprised when I read this book. When I finished the book and realized it was inspired by seeing a blind woman climb Machu Picchu I was very surprised. The way this was written had me convinced that it had been based off real events, more than just one event. Knowing this all came from Green's mind is incredible.
I very much enjoyed this book, but I hesitate giving it 5 stars because I felt there were loose ends with the email Angel's husband (ex-husband?) sent about new technology for getting vision back. It would have been interesting to see her take on it, whether she would want her vision back or not. I also thought the sex on the beach (literally) could have been done a bit more tastefully. I don't care that it was on a beach, but to just do that in front of so many people so publicly isn't romantic in any sense of the word. That part took away from the characters for me, it seemed too unreal compared to other events of the story and other character traits. That part just didn't work for me.
What I really did appreciate was that their looks weren't important and it was all about who they were as people, because that's what life is really about. So many books describe everyone as good looking and attractive and that gets a lot of mention, but other than one or two people saying how JC looked, without giving away too many detailed description, there was very little focus on their looks, which I really found wonderful.
I definitely recommend this book as I think it can teach us a lot about how we view people in general.