So I had a bit of a roller coaster with The Breakup Vacation. There were some aspects I enjoyed and others? Not so much. All in all, this one is trying to be an incredibly up beat story about a quest to get an ex back on a vacation. But there were a few elements that made it difficult to straddle finding yourself journey vs fun summer disaster romp. Keep reading my book review of The Breakup Vacation for my full thoughts.
Summary
The summer before senior year of college has arrived, and Grace has been anticipating an important trip to Los Angeles with her boyfriend, Josh. But when he unexpectedly dumps her, she’s left with nothing but a broken heart and an empty schedule.
Her best friends Tiff and Camille quickly come to her rescue by taking her on a post-break-up beach vacation in Cancun, hoping it will help her start to move on. Too bad neither of them knows that Josh will be there, too, along with his possibly-new girlfriend.
Grace is determined to win Josh back at all costs. But when she keeps crossing paths with Daniel, a gorgeous soccer player from Hawaii, she starts to rethink her plan. Daniel is everything Josh isn’t—easygoing, unpretentious, unselfish in bed—and he gets what it’s like to be biracial, too. Grace can’t help but wonder if it’s possible for your entire life to change in just one wild week in this boisterous and witty celebration of friendship, forgiveness, and falling in love.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
Let me just start off with what I appreciated. I enjoyed the biracial representation in both Grace and Daniel. As someone who has always felt stranded as a transracial adoptee, many things they said about being stuck resonated with me. Going back to a place people say is your ‘home’ only for you to feel disconnected. To be treated like you don’t belong. These paragraphs resonated and had the most emotional depth in The Breakup Vacation for me. But I think where this book struggles is to find a line between a story about Grace’s journey to find out her own self versus a series of somewhat shallow vacation disasters in an almost caricature movie like story.
Characters
Some moments, the characters almost felt shallow or underdeveloped. I enjoyed the foundational interactions between Grace, Camille and Tiff – especially as Grace serves to be some sort of medium between the two in terms of beliefs about identity – but then they’d have these moments which felt a bit over the top. In the book, I didn’t really get a good sense of the depth of these side characters which is a shame because I think so much of the book is about Grace’s lies to them and how she feels she can’t be open with them about her break up. I wanted to love their friendship, but it felt like I was missing some of these key memories, these key development moments of them together to appreciate their dynamic.
This is not only a key part of the plot, but also of her own character and development. Additionally, Daniel unfortunately also felt like a side character and not a love interest. I wanted to fall in love with him, but unfortunately the bar of “doesn’t treat you like garbage” wasn’t high enough for me to fall. I saw their connection in how they viewed pieces of their identity, but I wanted to see more in terms of their connection besides purely physical. How can I have the hope that this might work if I cannot buy the hope for the moment never mind tomorrow?
Overall?
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And finally, I wanted to love her journey to finding herself. To realizing she deserves better, but unfortunately the moments of almost caricature in terms of their decisions in Cancun, as well as the side characters, detracted from this central plot line’s emotional impact. Find The Breakup Vacation on Goodreads, Storygraph, Amazon, Bookshop.org, & Blackwells.