Books That Sparked My Love for Travel

Plus: Summer Reading Guide for Paid Subscribers

I got on my first plane at age seven with matching pink jelly shoes and bag bound for a family holiday to Ibiza. It was one of THE most exciting days of my life. I even had a special outfit for the journey - a purple shell suit (can you tell this was the ‘80s?)

But it wasn’t that trip that made me fall in love with the world.
It was books. Even then, I knew books offered something different—something deeper than beaches or hotel pools.

They let me live other lives. Walk other streets. Feel other skies. All thanks to fiction.

That was the real beginning of my love affair with travel. Not the passport stamps or the hotel pool, but the ability of a book to drop me in the middle of someone else’s world. I didn’t know it then, but I was already building a mental map of places I wanted to go, cultures I wanted to understand, lives I wanted to imagine.

But somewhere along the way, between kids, work, and day-to-day life, reading lost its place. Travel became logistics. Reading became research. Creativity took a backseat to productivity.

I stopped reading for wonder. I stopped traveling in my mind.

It was only when I began to reconnect with fiction again—not for work or obligation, but for pure escape—that something opened up in me.

If you’re feeling stuck or creatively flat this summer, pick a novel that transports you to a place you’ve never been.

We don’t always need a plane ticket to reconnect with our creative selves. Sometimes, all it takes is a story powerful enough to lift you out of your life and place you somewhere completely new.

Here are 6 books that did that for me plus you can also download my 2025 Summer Reading Guide featuring thrillers, historical fiction, uplifting novels, and non-fiction titles.