Amber Share Books in Order

Amber Share is an illustrator, graphic designer, and author whose work makes room for two things at once: real love for the outdoors and a very straight face about human nonsense. She grew up moving often as the daughter of a Navy chief, living in five states and in Italy before high school. Family trips to parks across the country gave her a lasting feel for big landscapes, long drives, and the kind of places that can reset your brain a little.

That mix of motion and scenery shows up in almost everything she makes.

Share studied graphic design and fine art at the University of Nebraska, and she has said that advertising appealed to her because it let humor and visual art meet in the same place. After college she worked full time in design, including agency work in Raleigh. The job sharpened her sense of color, layout, and lettering, but it also left her wanting more time to actually draw.

So she made that time herself. She started building an illustration practice on the side and kept circling back to projects that felt personal, funny, and tied to the outdoors she loved. She has talked about spending time in Rock Creek Park while living in Washington, D.C., and about realizing that parks, whether urban or wild, were where she felt most grounded.

The turning point came in late 2019. She was sketching national parks on her iPad as a creative challenge when she found a bizarre one-star review online and realized the complaint could become part of the artwork. The first Subpar Parks pieces paired retro-style illustrations with real, hilariously unimpressed reviews, and the joke landed because the affection for the places was always obvious.

What looked light and quick had real craft behind it.

Subpar Parks grew fast on Instagram, and in 2020 Share left her full-time job to work for herself. In 2021, Subpar Parks became a New York Times bestseller, turning the online project into a book with new material, park facts, and more room for her mix of humor and appreciation. Readers tend to like that balance. The work is funny on sight, but it also feels informed, visually sharp, and genuinely interested in why these places matter.

She followed that book with Subpar Parks Postcards, which turned the art into something you could mail, frame, or tuck into a gift. Then came Subpar Planet, a global follow-up that takes the same deadpan approach to famous landmarks and natural wonders around the world. Across those books, people seem to come for the dry humor and stay for the bright illustrations, the travel energy, and the reminder that even jaw-dropping places can attract very silly complaints.

A few themes run through all of Share's work: public lands, travel, hand lettering, and the gap between what the world offers and what people expect from it online. She is good at finding the funny line without losing the wonder. These days, her own site places her in Maine's lakes region, where hiking, camping, paddleboarding, and exploring natural landscapes still feed the work. Off the trail, she has also written about tending a big collection of plants and making things by hand, which feels exactly right for the person behind these books.