Family Vacations: Are They Ever Fun?

This is another one of the books I picked up to take on vacation. I mean, while on vacation with ones family, what better to read about than…a family on vacation? Thankfully, mine doesn’t have nearly as many issues as the Post family does.

Franny and Jim are celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary, while trying to recover from Jim’s affair with a much younger woman. Not only might it cost him his marriage, but it cost him his job. Sylvia has just graduated high school and is determined to lose her virginity before college (which is the plot of about 42 bad teen movies. There was also something involving getting drunk at a party and pictures on the internet.), Bobby is drowning in debt and his girlfriend, Carmen, feels like an outsider in this family. Franny’s best friend, Charles, and his husband Lawrence are anxiously awaiting news about a potential adoption. Stuff these people in a fancy house in Spain for two weeks, add a sexy, young Spanish tutor, and watch what happens.

I heard about this book on Twitter, from an author I really enjoy. Maybe that set my expectations too high for this book, or maybe being on vacation while reading about another vacation just isn’t smart. Whatever the reason, this book felt pretty flat to me. The characters seemed more like caricatures, a collection of tropes bundled together to create them. The scorned wife who sobs against the shoulder of her gay BFF; the shy, mousy daughter who is looking for a sexual awakening in the arms of a sexy, foreign man; the screw-up son who can’t keep his pants zipped. Of all the character, Lawrence felt the most well realized to me, and he had one of the smallest parts! His frustration with Charles’ relationship with these people, his suffering through this vacation because he loves his husband, came across more realistic than much of the rest of the book. The rest of it just lacked depth to me. I would have loved to see these characters fleshed out, explored, made to be interesting and memorable. There’s potential, just not the execution.

The writing was good, the story was predictable, but entertaining enough to spend a few hours with. It’s not a long book, it’s the kind that’s perfect for a lazy summer afternoon. It’s not going to change your life or really even stick with you once you put it down (I had to look up the names of most of the main characters), so I would recommend this as a pick up from the library. It’s not the worst, but I’ve read a lot better.