Binge-worthy Books About Vacations Gone Wrong

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.