A fun guide to a city of many parts. The main tourist highlights are covered, but more individual or unusual desires are also catered for, offering insights into the Berlin which locals experience on a day to day basis.

I really liked this book and would be happy to read similar books for different cities. I’ve visited Berlin a number of times and still found new places I want to go next time I visit. I feel like this book is for a specific type of person, I am one but don’t quite know how to define it…

I’d recommend checking it out from a library before buying to see if it suits your needs!

I adore travel books and thought this would be an amazing book, however, it does not work as an E-book and I do not think a lot of thought has gone in to how this downloads as an E-book unfortunately.

I would be more than happy to re-read the book with a better file or as a physical book as the book topic and genre are of interest to me. If you would like me to re-review please feel free to contact me at thesecretbookreview@gmail.com or via social media The_secret_bookreview (Instagram) or Secret_bookblog (Twitter). Thank you.

Out of quite a decent range of these novel travel guides I decided to pick the Berlin one, to see if it brought back any memories or taught me anything new. What was new was the wokeness of this book, where our first concern is eating sustainably, because let's face it we didn't fly here just for a weekend away for nothing. Here's a bonus map to a Curry Mile-styled three-mile strip, offering the least German cuisine in Berlin, because we're all in favour of all of Merkel's failed open-door immigration experiments. Oh, and don't even open these pages until you know what a "third-wave coffee shop" is. I mean, ignore me and my ignorance of what third wave feminism is – I had no idea two whole waves of coffee shops had become passe. Nor even that the bloody things came in waves.

This is a travel guide with added tossery, and there's no denying it. Photos of what you might see? No, we're monochrome. Full-on guides to anything and everything in snappy, succinct manner, cramming the choice allowed by one of the world's biggest cities between two over-stuffed covers? No, we're all about 200 words a page at most.

But "rein it in", I hear you cry. "This is a book about Berlin and all its uber-acceptance, and you're showing none of that." Well slap me with a Currywurst and a can of Grune, isn't this a travel guide? I love the idea of a travel guide from the POV of the people who live there – or I did. This is so far removed from the travel guide as a book can get, looking at what the locals know about the place that has naff all bearing on what the tourist wants. "Is that there Holocaust Museum worth it, and is Checkpoint Charlie free, or were those chunks of the Wall ever real (answer = no)?" "Sod that", the authors cry, "but here's the street market where us locals buy our lava lamps."

The fact is you're two thirds of the way through this before you're invited to the Pergamon (which ranks after a computer games museum and some waffle about Syrian refugees – oh and the standard quibbles about getting into Berghain that do nothing except prove the chips on the creators' shoulders). All told, this tells you NAFF ALL about what it is to be a tourist in Berlin. This is, to repeat, NOT a travel book. It's a list of some things Berliners might think us travellers will want to know about, because it's what Berliners want to know about (except only one of the three writers are German, and she isn't a Berlinerin, either). So it tells us nothing about getting from A-B, nor what those letters will even represent.

There is a wonderful concept here – the real, nitty-gritty, insider feel, where The Native eats breakfast, lunch and dinner, has its third-wave coffee (FFS) and goes clubbing. But this still failed. It had none of the bearing of a friendly airbnb-er advising you to their favourite haunts. It was restrictive, proscriptive and didn't even tell you how to get tickets to Union games. I googled a whole ONE of the eateries mentioned, and it had gone under since this was published.

None of the basics were covered, whatsoever. It gets one star, and that's because it told me where to go for Spreewald Gurken, because I still am a character in "Good Bye, Lenin!" and that and my Mocca Fix Gold are my mannas from heaven.

W*nkery abounds.

I love Berlin and visited this town more than once is an ever changing place
This an excellent guide that show me another way to visit this town and follow less known paths.
Lovely illustrations and easy to follow hints.I want to visit Berlin soon and will surely use this guide.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

A great guide with a different perspective. Easy to navigate through the sections. Includes many tips not found in other travel guides. Excited to get more on different cities.