Not particularly a fan. I definitely could have lived without the sex scenes. ( )

Read for book club. Considering this was really not my sort of book at all (I am not a dog/outdoorsy person), this was a surprisingly interesting read. The sheer resilience and resourcefulness of people living in rural Alaska is probably what will stay with me the most, although I also think they are completely crazy to want to live there!

The sections where she imagined her dogs speaking to her in a sort of toddler language were really off-putting, and structurally I was ready for the memoir to end after the first big race, but then we were off to the Iditarod. The whole thing just seemed extremely dangerous (and cold) to me. ( )

Inspiring story in awe of her strength and bravery. Audio is very good - read by Kristin. I cried during parts of it.
Very well written, lots of information and description of the Alaskan wilderness. ( )

Could literally feel my anxiety ramping up as I read about her Yukon Quest and Iditarod races. She _almost_ makes me wish I didn’t have allergies and liked being outside for long periods of time. Almost. ( )

I picked this up to review because the premise sounded really interesting. This was well done and in general I really enjoyed it. I would recommend to anyone who is interested in survival, Alaska, or dog sledding.

Kristin makes some dicey decisions as a young woman and ends up in a bad marriage and a bad situation. She takes a job up in Alaska taking care of a guy’s cabin and his sled dogs as kind of a reset to her life. Up in Alaska she finds a new love (running sled dogs) and a new man to share her life with as well. This leads to her racing in both the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod.

I enjoyed a lot of the survival aspects to this story and learning about dog sledding. Living in MN we get to the very cold temperatures discussed here and the idea of living in a place with those temperatures for extended periods of time without the support of a modern infrastructure is really intriguing.

For the most part I enjoyed this. It was a quick read that was easy to stay engaged in. I do have a couple small complaints. The first is that I could have done without the baby-like doggie-talk throughout; this didn’t fit with the story and felt awkward. The second is that I wish more time has been spent talking about survival in central Alaska and on the races themselves. We hear a lot about things leading up to the race but very little about what happens during the race itself.

Overall this was a good read and I enjoyed it. If you are interested in dog sledding or cold weather survival or in Alaska in general I would definitely recommend. ( )