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The Floating Feldmans
Elyssa Friedland
It’s been more than a decade since the estranged Feldman clan has spent more than twenty-four hours together, but matriarch Annette Feldman is determined to right the ship. When she books a family cruise for her 70th birthday, it’s a perfect storm of dysfunction that will have you cringe-laughing all the way back to shore.
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The Vacationers
Emma Straub
A two-week escape from Manhattan to the beautiful island of Majorca in the Mediterranean Sea—what could possibly go wrong? Family, that’s what. Infidelity, childhood rivalries, angst, and domestic drama all conspire to ruin the Post family’s sun-soaked vacation in this witty and completely relatable summer read.
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Do Not Become Alarmed
Maile Meloy
It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. One minute the kids are playing on the beach. The next, they’re gone. In this gripping page-turner, two families embark on a cruise in Central America and their children disappear on an excursion to shore. While the adults tear each other apart, the children discover resilience they never knew they posessed.
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You Me Everything
Catherine Isaac
Jess and her ten-year-old son William set off to spend the summer in the French countryside, where Jess’s ex—and William’s father—Adam, runs a beautiful hotel in a restored castle. Jess is on a mission to make Adam fall in love with his son, but all does not go to plan.
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Tomorrow There Will Be Sun
Dana Reinhardt
Two families arrive in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for a once-in-a-lifetime vacation. Jenna organized the trip to celebrate her husband’s fiftieth birthday, but he is sharing clandestine phone calls with someone else, and their best friends suddenly seem like annoying strangers. Throw a bad news teenager into the mix and everything goes south.
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What You Don't Know About Charlie Outlaw
Leah Stewart
Everyone loves a Hollywood romance, but what goes on behind the tabloids is far more complicated than TV stars Charlie Outlaw and Josie Lamar ever could have imagined. When Charlie gets into trouble deep in the jungles of a remote island, Josie finds herself faced with the role of a lifetime.
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The Last Cruise
Kate Christensen
The 1950s ocean liner Queen Isabella is making her final voyage—a retro cruise from Long Beach to Hawaii and back—before heading to the scrapyard. The guests on board trade in their cell phones for a bygone era of fine dining, classic highballs, and sophisticated jazz, but modern day troubles will make this anything but a smooth sail.
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Siracusa
Delia Ephron
Set on the seaside in Sicily, this is summer noir at its best. Delia Ephron expertly weaves a tale filled with the tension of two imploding marriages, toxic mother-daughter relationships, and the strain of family travel abroad.
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The High Season
Judy Blundell
Welcome to summer in the Hamptons, where local working-class families fade into the weathered woodwork to make way for the moneyed Manhattanites that pay the bills. Every year, Ruthie Beamish and her teenage daughter give up their home to make way for renters, but this summer the stakes are higher than ever.
Everyone’s summer vacation looks better through an Instagram filter. Waving palms at sunset, poolside Mai Tais with paper umbrellas, Italian villas perched on Umbrian hills. What you don’t see? Endless TSA lines, peeling sunburns, and that special simmering undercurrent of resentment that hides beneath the surface of seemingly perfect marriages. The list of summer reads below reveals the truth of family vacations: They can seriously suck. A Caribbean cruise sounds like a good idea until you’re reliving decades-old sibling rivalries in a cramped cabin for seven days. You might be better off on a staycation after all.
Featured image: @criene via Twenty20