Reddit reviews Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals: Adventures in Love and Danger

For strong lady leads, I love love love turning to memoirs.

Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton:

"Before Gabrielle Hamilton opened her acclaimed New York restaurant Prune, she spent twenty hard-living years trying to find purpose and meaning in her life. Blood, Bones & Butter follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily wooden spoon in hand; the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality; Hamilton’s own kitchen at Prune, with its many unexpected challenges; and the kitchen of her Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton’s idyllic past and her own future family—the result of a prickly marriage that nonetheless yields lasting dividends. By turns epic and intimate, Gabrielle Hamilton’s story is told with uncommon honesty, grit, humor, and passion."

Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals by Wendy Dale (this one is my favorite OF ALL TIME):
"From salsa dancing in a rum-induced haze and struggling to exercise in Colombia (“the guerillas were using the track again today”), to crossing international borders unconventionally and dodging bombs in Lebanon (“the good news was that they were ‘small bombs’”), Wendy somehow manages to find herself in the midst of hysterical, adventurous, and often illegal situations. Case in point—every time she heads to Costa Rica, she is forced to visit another prison. Although a jail may not be everyone’s idea of a place to ?nd a date, Wendy soon falls in love with a man, a country, and its people and risks everything she has to clear his name."