Why a Booktrail?
2000s: The Mercury Travel Club is a travel club with a difference!
The Mercury Travel Club
What you need to know before your trail
Angie Shepherd is looking forward to her silver wedding anniversary – 25 years of marriage, fancy that! However, just before that, her husband leaves her for another woman. Her world has fallen apart and as she tries to come to terms wit her new found singledom, she joins a book club. Even gets a life coach to sort her life out. Then she decides to go one step further and launch her own business – as she works in a travel agency, she decides to launch the Mercury Travel Club where she will match travellers interests, hobbies etc with a destination package to suit.
Travel can clear the mind, take you away from yourself and bond you with the people you love….can’t it?
Travel Guide
(c) TheBookTrail
Manchester
The book starts in Cross Street – “A hearse drives out of the cul-de-sac as I drive in. I hope that’s not an omen”. Cross Road: genuinely the name of this street. I didn’t pick the place because of the address but I have to confess to enjoying the irony.”
Granny-Oakes who come on stage on zimmer frames before tossing them aside, like those Bucks Fizz skirts.
Life on the ship – Mercury Travel – Global Adventures, Local Service.
Divorce and life after divorce must be like feeling adrift at sea – not knowing which direction you’re going in and how you are going to sail back to dry land as it were.
Difficult too when your twenty odd year old daughter would rather bake cakes than help out her mum, and who is somewhat embarrassed by it all. If she embarrasses easily, wait til she meets Gnorman and Gnora gnomes! Yes, they are real characters in this book.
Monaco
A journey to the city where “No matter how well you think you’re dressed, in Monaco you’l always feel slightly shabby. The place loves to flaunt its wealth and this is particularly shabby. The place oozes the glamour and notoriety of the Rat Pack era; the cars are something else.
Ferraris, Lambourghinis and many more such as the Hennessey Venom GT which sounds like mix of a few drinks and a rather nasty snake (bite), but then if you’re a car enthusiast, you will be getting very excited by this point.
Other travels
How about an evening in Crosby? Or an evening in a haunted house?
There are more short jaunts to Cognac, La Rochelle and Bilbao then a longer stay to New York. On-Shore shenanigans abound…
New York
There is a nice stay here as the STandard hotel they stay in in anything but! It’s the one you might have heard of on the news for having toilets with ‘Spectacular views of the city’ and where the people of New York would also have equally spectacular views of any toilet dwellers….
Maybe not the bird’s eye view you would imagine from the city that never sleeps!
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
Funny! Ah a women sets up a travel club matching people to hobbies….joins a bookclub….reads A Thousand Splendid Suns and feels an affinity to a character in the book… I think Angie would like the BookTrail! When there is a suggestion to organise a trip based on the book Breakast at Tiffany’s, well that was me very excited!
I was just a little disappointed that the travel theme wasn’t really developed. There’s plenty mention excitement in the planning such as Walking like the Egyptians and Baking Baklava in the Baltics which personally sounds brilliant, but most of the action (house moving, singing grannies and a wanna be Mary Berry of a daughter) takes place in Manchester. There’s not much of Manchester evoked but the divorce landscape is paved with Northern humour.
The writing was fresh and fun and for a book to make light of life’s struggles and a woman getting over a divorce with a sense of humour, then it’ s a winner. I just wanted to get on a ship and go sailing off somewhere! Mind you I have been inspired to see if you can still buy gnomes anywhere (one holding a book perhaps?) and taking a few of Angie’s ideas for future holidays perhaps.
And maybe wander around Manchester and see if there are any posters for the Granny -Oakes…..
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Mercury Travel Club
Author/Guide: Helen Bridgett Destination: Manchester, Monaco, New York Departure Time: 2000s
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