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3.45 AVERAGE
3.45 AVERAGE
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The story devoted 85% of its time to making its characters super unlikeable, 10% of its time on a random side character and about 5% into the rushed tied-with-a-bow style ending that felt neither earned or deserved.
The matriarch of the Feldman family, Annette, treats her family to a cruise to celebrate her 70th birthday.
The family isn’t on the closest of terms. There are a lot of secrets being kept.
Annette isn’t as close to her adult children, Freddie and Elise, as she wants to be.
Nothing like a little forced family bonding to fix things, right? :)
With everyone in very close quarters, tensions arise and secrets are uncovered.
There’s a lot of drama but it’s a family of good people. I enjoyed this a lot. The characters were well written and likable. The distance between the family members was believable without being insurmountable.
They just all have their issues and it’s finally time to deal with them all.
Maybe a little forced family time can fix everything for them. You’ll have to read it to find out. I thought it was a great read. I also loved that it was set on a cruise ship. I love cruising and there aren’t many books out there set on a ship. Don’t let the book talk you out of a cruise though.
I won this book through a giveaway and thoroughly enjoyed it.
The family isn’t on the closest of terms. There are a lot of secrets being kept.
Annette isn’t as close to her adult children, Freddie and Elise, as she wants to be.
Nothing like a little forced family bonding to fix things, right? :)
With everyone in very close quarters, tensions arise and secrets are uncovered.
There’s a lot of drama but it’s a family of good people. I enjoyed this a lot. The characters were well written and likable. The distance between the family members was believable without being insurmountable.
They just all have their issues and it’s finally time to deal with them all.
Maybe a little forced family time can fix everything for them. You’ll have to read it to find out. I thought it was a great read. I also loved that it was set on a cruise ship. I love cruising and there aren’t many books out there set on a ship. Don’t let the book talk you out of a cruise though.
I won this book through a giveaway and thoroughly enjoyed it.
I absolutely love cruises so every now and then when I find a book that has something to do with cruising, I will read it! For me, the fact that this story takes place on a cruise made it way more enjoyable and way more fun - but the reason for that is just because I love cruises. Overall, I did think the story was interesting and the character did have some depth to them and you can see things from each of their perspectives and understand why the family as a whole has issues. The sub plot line about the cruise director didn't really seem to fit with the story but I'm just glad it wasn't a bigger part because it was more of a distraction away from the main story. I don't think think there were any bad words in it that I can remember and the sex scenes were about one or two sentences each and not descriptive. So overall, this was a good book, I'd recommend it if you're just looking for a fun read.
A light read, with a rather predictable story. However, the characters were all nicely developed.
A charming concept with middling at best execution, from the ending that wraps every last serious issue up in a neat bow to the unrealistic dialogue and clumsy turns of phrase to the fact that the explosive conflict promised in the book's beginning turned out to be rather mundane in reality.
DNF - the characters were unlikeable, the “wit” was nonexistent, and the attempts to make the story quirky fell flat.
lighthearted
Entertaining novel and I appreciated the cruise setting with all its oddities, as well as the theme of family, but nothing noteworthy about this book.
I loved this book! It was a great story about family and what pulls them apart and brings them back together. The Feldmans were very relatable, flawed characters. Most people can be able to see characteristics of someone in our own families. The setting of a Cruise Ship was awesome, the ship and all of it’s grandiosity almost becoming a character in itself. The story was at times very poignant, with commentary about the importance of family. At other times, throughout it was HILARIOUS! The baked Alaska scene was one of the funniest scenes I have read in a book and literally made me LAUGH OUT LOUD! This book definitely should be made into a movie. What a delightful and fun vacation read!
This family story set on a cruise is setup to be an impending disaster where each family member has a secret they've been holding back on, bubbling up. Put all these family members on a boat together for a week and of course things start boiling and spilling over. The story has funny and poignant and tension. The ship exacerbates the typical family get together that's usually filled with tension and years of stories and resentments. It all comes together, as it always does in these stories and the reader is left feeling whole and a bit better off.