Sara Reviews: Around the World in 80 Days!

I honestly hated this book. A guy goes around the world in 80 days. The end. Who cares? I'm surprised this book holds its appeal to so many people today, because it just doesn't feel relevant. This story would have been interesting at the time of its writing when people hadn't really traveled and didn't have the internet and didn't know about the world, because it does a pretty good job of putting the reader in exotic places. However, reading it now, it's just like 'oh this guy goes all over the place and has lots of obstacles and then he overcomes them.' The attitude is also extremely Eurocentric, and I can hardly blame the author given the time period, but it just seems dated now. It's very 'lol foreigners, they're so uncivilized!' Aouda is described as basically white with her European education and she's super hot so it's chill to like her even though she's Indian. That all said, the characters are at least sympathetic and compelling, and even though it's a pretty straightforward story, you are somewhat caught up in whether or not the protagonists will be successful (spoiler alert: they are).

I think my resentment was partially based upon self-loathing that I almost couldn't power through a 60,000 word book. And guess how many hot air balloons there were?

ZERO. 2/10 stars.

Word count: 62,465 
Sara's total points: 159,275