This was a very quick audiobook to fly through, however I was missing some meat in this story. I found the female friendships to see forced and that made it hard for me to really get into this one.

A fun vacation romance with a hilarious girl gang. I really liked the characters in this one and the friendships between the girls were great. I also loved Daniel and wow was he spicy 😉 he brought out the best in Grace. I definitely recommend this one on audio as it was a quick listen and was very entertaining!

Book Review:

****Disclaimer: After reading this book I have come to the realization that I am not the target audience! While I was disappointed with this story, it might be the perfect fit for someone else.

I was originally drawn to this book because the cover was cute and the title/ description sounded interesting. As a huge fan of YA fiction I thought it would make for a great summer/ beach read. Sadly, I struggled to finish this book. I was ready to DNF it about 40% in, but felt I needed to push through because I received it as an ARC.

My main issue with the book was the characters. Unfortunately, I was unable to connect with a single one. I found them ALL to be off putting. While they are young and have lots of learning to do, their lack of maturity was rough.

***This book is full of excess drinking, playing emotional games, and explicit sexual scenes.

Special thanks to Netgalley, MTV Books, Simon and Schuster Children’s Publishing, and Anna Garcia for allowing me to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

This book was bad. Full stop. It is full 90s MTV Spring Break in book form. 0% substance 100% tequila. I feel bad ripping a book so bad because someone spent the time to write it but this was just not it. And it also felt kinda racist 😬

The Breakup Vacation by Anna Gracia

Thank you MTV Books and NetGalley for the eARC.

Blurb:
It’s the summer before senior year of college, and Grace is about to make the worst decision of her life in this “sexy, sun-drenched cocktail of chaotic good fun and heartfelt hilarity” (Sarah Kuhn, author of the Heroine Complex series) that captures the messiness of your early twenties, while highlighting the necessity of girlfriends at any—and every—age.

✨ My thoughts:
I Absolutely love the cover of this book and it was a quick one to get through! I got just the book I thought it would be… some spicy romance between people in their twenties, living young, wild, and free. I see some reviews hating so much on the book having shallow characters but personally I thought we got exactly what the book promises. I thought it was entertaining and fun… a book I’d like to read on a beach vacation!

Haters gonna hate!

Happy reading 📖

This book was not great. Grace is quite annoying and comes off as a spoiled brat. I found myself dreading reading it and rolling my eyes more often than not.

This was such a fast read, but I'll be honest -- there are some parts you just skim. And it was a slow burn until all the spice came at the end. Did I hate it? No, but I was left a little wanting. Enough to read a sequel? Probably not. Overall, not a bad read.

I DNF'ed this book because the main character was so awful. And the romance? Where was it? All I read were a lot of sex scenes that didn't really mean anything because the characters were so horrible

I saw this book @ target & immediately bought it. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to read it. I enjoyed every single bit of it. I loved it!

I want do like this one but overall it was “meh.” The cover made it seem so much better than what it actually was. Josh broke up with Grace and when she finds out he’s headed to Mexico, she convinces her 2 friends to take a vacation to the same area. When in Mexico, she spends most of her time ditching her friends, meeting with Josh to get him to take her back and also hooking up with Daniel, whom she met at a club.

At best, it’s a messy hookup novel. And that’s about all it is.

Thanks to NetGalley for this eARC.

I would have loved this book in college. However, as a 33 year old wife and mother, I could not with the main character's drunken behaviors and the fact that she stalked her ex to Cancun! Also the overuse of a phrase reworded in like 100 different ways when describing a girl the main character hated did me in. This could have been edited down a ton.

Absolutely hated the main character and everything about this book. I love the movie - Forgetting Sarah Marshall but I'll never forgive this book for trying to put such a spin on it 😭 This was worse than some of those NA books that I read in 2015(you know those ones where the characters are in college and always having random hookups while getting drunk everyday). The FMC - Grace here is so hung up over her ex that she's willing to lie to her friends and plan a vacation to Cancun just so that she can run into him and rekindle their relationship. Like why??? He was such a POS and he was basically just using her and throwing her away when he didn't need her. Where's your self esteem, girl? Why go crawling back to such a shitty human? It'd have been okay if they'd had some good spots in their relationship but I literally couldn't see anything redeemable about it.

And after getting to Cancun, Grace and her friends just kept downing drinks to the point that I was wondering how they didn't die of alcohol poisoning! Can we please stop showing YA/NA characters getting so drunk that they might die at any point(not all teenagers/college students like getting drunk)? And then Grace meets Daniel(who's also half-Asian like her) and immediately there's insta-lust between them. I don't even know what they saw in each other but Grace kept leading him on while still pining for her ex. And while they bond over their shared experiences of being half-asian and never being fully enough for either side, some of Grace's rants were so weird and off-putting because of how hypocritical they sounded? Because Grace is just as prejudiced as she claims others are towards her - with her comments about Caity. Grace's friends were also very stereotypical and too forgiving of her. Camille was so exaggeratedy French that I wondered whether other French people would actually like her. Daniel had no character development at all and was just there to be Grace's vacation hookup.
I just couldn't stand this book and it's characters and I wish I could erase it from my memory 🥲

DNF at 50%.

I felt like there was a lot of potential for this book, but it was wholly not a hit for me. The characters were pretty much all insufferable and I felt like so many of the conversations that were had between the female characters were very unnecessary and never ended up impacting the actual plot or story line.

The Breakup Vacation follows Grace, the narrator, after her somewhat serious boyfriend breaks up with her to focus more on his growing acting career. Her best friends, Tiff and Camille, decide they need a girl's weekend, and during this trip, the main character continues trying to meet up with her ex while coincidentally running into a new guy.
While I enjoyed this story and the idea of taking a vacation to get over an ex where you run into a new guy, I could not get behind this main character. She was constantly obsessed with what her ex was doing and if he was with someone new. This created times when she lied to her friends and new love interest, creating a predictable third-act conflict where everyone learns about her lies.
The Breakup Vacation is a great read for anyone looking for a messy vacation-ey read to transport you somewhere where it is warm.

I really wanted to love this book and thought I would with the fun premise but this was just missing something for me. The first thing I will say is that I didn’t find myself rooting for the main character which I think I should have been, considering this is her whole story of discovery about what she wants in a relationship. I also could not really understand why her male main character was interested in her because I personally didn’t find her super compelling. In general all of the characters felt a little flat to me, which is why I couldn’t get myself involved in the story. I think this had a lot of potential as a premise, but I just didn’t love the execution of this idea.

I am sad that I didn’t really like this book. I thought I was going to. I expected it to be so cute and then it fell short for me. I didn’t relate to any of the characters and I didn’t feel swept away to anywhere.

When Grace’s boyfriend breaks up with her out of nowhere for a huge career opportunity, she is heartbroken. Her friends suggest a girls trip to cheer her up, and Grace thinks Cancun is the perfect place to go…after all, that’s where Josh is, and it will be the perfect opportunity to win him back. While she’s there balancing hanging with her friends, and sneaking away to visit Josh, Grace also keeps running into Daniel, who is the complete opposite of Josh. As the trip goes on, Grace realizes her plan might not be the best after all.

This was a super quick and cute read, but I somehow missed that it was YA and that definitely led to me having different expectations going in. When I saw it compared to Forgetting Sarah Marshall I was very excited, but because the characters were so young and immature, it didn’t have the Sarah Marshall effect I was expecting. That being said, had I gone in with different expectations, I think I would have enjoyed this book a lot more.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster and NetGalley for the advance copy.

This one fell a bit short for me and I was definitely bummed.

The premise and plot pulled me in from the start but as the story continued I found it hard to stay interested. Our main character was hard to relate to. Plus, all of the characters seemed very surface level without really getting to know any of them.

Also, would've preferred to see the couple together on the page instead of focusing on mending the break up. Felt like I needed that context.

I was iffy on this book when I started it, but I LOVED it at the end.. the first couple chapters were rough, but necessary to set up the plot but it didn’t immediately hook me, but we pursued and I’m SO happy I did!! The self-discovery, the introspection, and also the conflict the FMC went through was very well described and even made me think of my own experiences to check myself.

We want to root for Josh and the second chance romance that plays into the storyline, but once Daniel is introduced I was left thinking “Josh who?” Ugh Daniel is everything!! With the concept of the book from the name being a “breakup vacation” I didn’t expect a traditional HEA given that it was on a vacation with vacation romances, but I was very happy with the HFN and felt it was more an HEA for the FMC in her own self-discovery and that’s the main takeaway!

Moral of the story: Find yourself a damn Daniel!

I’m so confused by the negative reviews on this book. I can’t help but think this situationship-style book is triggering some repressed emotions in some people who see themselves in Grace.😆

Please don’t take this book so seriously. They’re 21 year olds who are drinking a lot on spring break. Sure, Grace I’d a little whiny. The whole point is that it’s crazy that she would plan her entire spring break in Cancun over a 6 month situation with Mr. The Bar Is On The Ground on her friends dime. He literally gives us nothing, which is why Mr. Basic Human Compassion is the stars in the sky. This is a spring break book! I’m all for it to see the main character learn from her toxic relationship in real time. Usually romance books preface a long ago ex that they learned their lesson about — this is that lesson. Grace starts off really laughably pathetic, but that’s the point!

This is a gossipy, drama, bar is on the ground romance but in a juicy way! It’s so reminiscent of the time I entertained a man who gave me breadcrumbs. This is all the drama of a situationship without the part where you yourself have to experience it!

I loved the contrast in communication and Grace not understanding it as a connection rather nothing to lose because she’s just that deep into the situationship. The contrast between her besties is cute too.

This book is so messy and it definitely gave MTV vibes. Loved. A perfect spring break read.