I was lucky enough to be offered another book to read that is going to feature in ‘Don’t Buy Her Flowers’ packages going forward – and so I obviously said yes (having never knowingly refused a free book!) I have to say that real life / autobiographies are not a genre I often read – but sometimes it’s good to try something outside your standard comfort zone. Here is the blurb:

“Aged just seven, Suzanne Heywood set sail with her parents and brother on a three-year voyage around the world. What followed turned instead into a decade-long way of life, through storms, shipwrecks, reefs and isolation, with little formal schooling. No one else knew where they were most of the time and no state showed any interest in what was happening to the children.
Suzanne fought her parents, longing to return to England and to education and stability. This memoir covers her astonishing upbringing, a survival story of a child deprived of safety, friendships, schooling and occasionally drinking water… At seventeen Suzanne earned an interview at Oxford University and returned to the UK.
From the bestselling author of What Does Jeremy Think?, Wavewalker is the incredible true story of how the adventure of a lifetime became one child’s worst nightmare – and how her determination to educate herself enabled her to escape”

The book starts in the 1970s with Suzy and her family in Warwick before her father decides to take them on a 3 year trip around the world sailing in the footsteps (um, that doesn’t quite make sense?!) of Captain Cook’s circumnavigation to celebrate it’s 200th anniversary. The family share a surname with the aforementioned Captain – and Mr Cook is very focussed in his plans for the trip – with his wife and kids (Suzy and her younger brother Jon) being swept along with it whether they want to or not.

The trip doesn’t go exactly as planned – and ends up being extended again and again. The family take on paying crew members to help fund the trip – which adds to the characters in the book. At times I found the storyline quite repetitive – but I guess the whole experience was at times. I also do not enjoy boats (I get motion sickness on a lilo!) and some of the descriptions – especially of ‘the wave’ incident – made me feel physically sick, which shows just how well it was described!

I have to say that I really did not like Mr and Mrs Cook – they appeared to have absolutely no thought or love for their kids at all. (Although I appreciate this book is told from Suzy’s point of view, and she’s now seemingly estranged from them, but I do wonder what they would say about their singlemindedness to complete the trip and be together as a couple – often seemingly to the detriment of their children).

Suzy was clearly incredibly self motivated to try and complete her studies by correspondence school (something that I think is much more common in Australia due to how much of the population lives in far flung outposts – and well before home schooling was a ‘thing’ for lots of us #shudderatthememories) and shows incredible strength of character. Given the incredibly unusual experiences – Suzy appears to be a surprisingly normal person.

Overall it was a really interesting book – and the trip around the world (visiting places I’ve been lucky enough to visit in South Africa and Australia) was great.

A big thank you to Don’t Buy Her Flowers and the publishers for my free review copy.