O’Brien, Shannon. Stray. Roam Light Publishing, 2025.
Reason: as a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing I get to read fun books. This is one such book.
When her ex-boyfriend John committed suicide in 2006, his sudden death prompted Shannon O’Brien to live her life a little differently: she became more fully aware of life passing her by. She decided to see the world with eyes wide open and a promise to be ready for anything. For more than fifteen years she has been doing exactly that. As a Lonely Planet enthusiast she planned to to spend six months in South America, traveling through Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia.
Shannon kicks off Stray with her best friend and a tour of La Paz’s famous prison (and tourist attraction) where the prisoners give tours and rule the prison. In Bolivia the pair volunteer for Comunidad Inti Wara Yassi – a nonprofit deep in the jungle which cares for exotic animals of all kinds. Fun fact: O’Brien was in charge of feeding twenty spider monkeys. Next, she and a new travel companion named Noah get lost hiking in a canyon without food or water. They celebrate their survival with a trip to Argentina to rent bicycles and drink Malbec and fernet con cocoa before moving on to the Australian Outback for a year. After Noah came teaching in Nepal and experiencing the Teej festival. After meeting Xander, it’s to India in time for the Diwali festival. Her experiences in Thailand are harrowing. Then she meets Blake in Cambodia. They travel to Thailand before partying and paying for it in Portugal. Where she ended up is anyone’s guess. The story ends there.
What I appreciated most was that throughout Stray Shannon displays a deep knowledge about the cultures and histories of each region she visits. While it took me a very long to finish Stray is/was enjoyable.
As an aside, some of Shannon’s details didn’t make sense to me. For example, it seemed as if she and her family (father and sister) were staying in a little town two hours south of Bangkok. When her sister and father had a tragic swimming accident Shannon traveled between Hua Hin and a Bangkok hospital to see them. Does that mean she spent four hours a day going back and forth between the two Thai towns?
Music: The Doors, The Who, U2, Dark Angels, Los Blinkers, Fleetwood Mac, Arctic Monkeys, Backstreet Boys, “Sexual Healing,” and Keith Richards.
~*LunaSea*~ 