I admit to not knowing where the British Virgin Islands are, or anything about them at all. This entertaining memoir of an expat who lived on Tortola in the British Virgin Islands from 1970-2 remedied my ignorance somewhat and was ideal escapism.

When Lally Brown’s husband got an engineering contract in Tortola, they escaped the grey and cold boredom of their everyday lives in Britain and found themselves in paradise. Beautiful beaches, sailing to deserted islands, making friends in the community. It wasn’t all great, particularly the giant insects, possibility of shark attacks, frustrating bureaucracy and meeting some horrible entitled people, but generally it sounds like a wonderful time. The author’s writing style is straight-forward and friendly. She has published a few other memoirs and I’m definitely going to check them out. Interestingly there wasn’t a lot of detail in this memoir about the era, beyond some references to the political issues of the time; perhaps this was due to the slower pace of life and relative isolation of the location. Occasionally there was missing punctuation and the dialogue for some reason was in both italics and quotation marks. I would’ve liked for the author’s husband to have a name, as he is always called ‘my husband’. Otherwise there is nothing to complain of and I certainly recommend this book to anyone in search of a warm-hearted, amusing travel memoir.

Independently published in 2016.