Lonely Planet Ultimate Travel Coloring Book

While the Lonely Planet Ultimate Travel Coloring Book is a delight to flip through, but proves to be lacking in its purpose – especially when coloring is supposed to promote relaxation.The book provides around 100 pages to color and decorate as you please, but the lines are often complicated to navigate and are so small that they easily blur together if not hunched over with the book only inches from your face (I have good vision too). The illustrations seem to look better without any coloring at all, which would be fine if I wanted a coffee table book.

While I knew this was marketed for adults, it does require more finesse than the amateur adult color-er such as myself. As a note, I didn’t realize I was an amateur until this book. I also wasn’t a fan of a few of the options, for example, the Iguazú Falls page had a reptile instead of a river or waterfall scene. There are also some spreads that span across two pages which makes for difficult coloring and no perforated edges to remove pages cleanly. While I was disappointed in aspects of the execution, it is still a beautiful book that illustrates many extraordinary places.