The Breakup Vacation by Anna Gracia
If you’re looking for a light read, one that doesn’t go into a lot of depth, then this is the book for you. Anna Gracia’s clear inspiration behind The Breakup Vacation include the movie Saving Sarah Marshall and a whole lot of MTV’s annual Spring Break footage.
The book starts with Grace paying a drunken visit to the bedroom window belonging to her ex-boyfriend, Josh. Josh conveniently has another woman over, but mentions that he’ll soon be going to Cancun in order to shadow a filmmaker, prepping for his dream job.
Meanwhile, in order to help Grace forget about him, her friends and roommates Tiff and Camilla plan a vacation. Grace convinces them to also go to Cancun in the hopes that she can hunt down Josh and spend some quality time trying to win him back. As you can imagine, hijinks ensue and Grace ends up falling for a local named Daniel.
My Thoughts on The Breakup Vacation
I’m not usually a fan of the romance genre, so I’m probably not the best person to be writing this review. In order to look at the book fairly, here are a few pros and cons:
Pro – The protagonist, one of her friends, and her love interest, Daniel, are all of mixed race. This is a big change from the usual romance trope of blond-haired, blue-eyed skinny women getting all of the attention.
Pro – The book has it’s funny moments. I like how Camille went from “I don’t understand a lot of your references because I’m French” to nearly starting an international incident when discussing soccer in a bar.
Pro – The book is very well written. The descriptions of what the characters are wearing help the reader picture them, and the plot is easy to follow.
Con – The plot has it’s cringe moments like many books and even movies in the genre do. This is one of the reasons why I don’t really enjoy the romance/romantic comedy genre.
Con – The characters don’t really seem to be very fleshed out. Why does Grace love Josh so much? We never really find out. She just does and we need to take her at her word. Tiff and Camille could use more depth as well.
Of course, your milage may vary.
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