Nothing to Declare by Mary Morris

After reading Eat Pray Love, I was excited to read another travel/personal discovery story. I picked Nothing to Declare by Mary Morris and was hugely disappointed. She had a lot to declare on how annoying the people she was hanging out with were, how lonely she was, how annoying it was of her boyfriend to take care of her like he did. If whining every 5 pages that she was lonely, so lonely, made this a journey of self discovery then I'd like to inform you I'm an uncle! To these monkeys. Aren't they cute?

Golden monkey
Originally uploaded by floridapfe.

She found the boyfriend in San Miguel, Mexico after being there for a few weeks. She kept going to stay with him in Mexico City, where she would complain about hating it in his apartment. After traveling around Central America and nearly going to Panama with a man she meets, she goes back to her boyfriend's place in Mexico City and once again is a miserable P.I.T.A. They part on less than stellar terms and she goes back to San Miguel. Then when he doesn't show up for a planned visit she goes into paroxysms of woe. She keeps asking her neighbor Lupe (who is struggling to feed her children) if he has left her. GOOD GRIEF.

I suppose I finished the book because I thought perhaps her journey of self discovery would make her a better person. Instead it just ended with her coming back to the US.

SKIP THIS BOOK and read Eat Pray Love instead!