Story for the Week
We’re ready…counting down the days to our biennial Disney cruise. It’s almost here, and I am beyond excited. Taking time away from work is a nice reset. And my favorite way to vacation is on a cruise ship.
I think I’m an anomaly. I know plenty of people who despise the idea of a cruise. Too many people, they say. They’re crowded, they say. You have to fight for deck chairs, and the pools are too small. And Disney? Too many kids. And you would think, introvert that I am, that I would hate all of that.
Au contraire!
Six and a half years ago, we embarked on our first Disney cruise. I had always wanted to go on a cruise, and my husband Dennis was obsessed with Disney. We booked it a little more than a year in advance. Corinne was going to be 14 by the time we sailed, so we decided to take along her best friend so she and Aly could do things together. Dennis struggled a lot as a lifelong asthmatic, so we also took my best friend. When Dennis would get tired and had to go back to the cabin, Stephanie and I could do things together.
Little did we know that Dennis would be diagnosed with cancer while we planned, and it would be our last family vacation. He was on chemo, so he struggled even more than he did with his asthma. We also sailed in January of 2020, and the world shut down for COVID in March shortly after we came home.
But it was still the most amazing trip. Amazing enough that I came home saying I would not be disappointed if every vacation we took from then on was on a cruise ship.
Two-and-a-half years later, Corinne, Aly, Stephanie, and I decided to go on another cruise. We bought door decorations that included Dennis. We toasted him several times during the cruise. My birthday happened while we were at sea, so they bought decorations and a gigantic Disney birthday tie. It was bittersweet…and fantastic.
That year, we took advantage of the placeholder booking offered by Disney Cruise Lines. If you make a reservation on a future cruise before you return to port, the deposit is only $250 (a steal). It’s fully refundable if you don’t use it. The next cruise comes at a 10% discount, and you have two full years to sail. So a Disney cruise became a regular vacation for us.
These memories rank among my favorites. As I pulled together the photos, I realized that at least one photo every year shows Corinne and Aly laughing together. 🥰 Aly isn’t able to join us this year, so Corinne’s other best friend Jakub is sailing with us. We’ve already booked our spa packages, and our luggage tags arrived a few weeks ago. It is right around the corner, and I am so looking forward to it.
And we will definitely be booking our next reservation before we return to port on this trip. All of our cruises up until now have been to the Caribbean. For the next one, we hope to sail to Alaska. 🤞🏻
Our cruise family is getting bigger too. Jakub wants to go with us next time (and he hasn’t even been on the first cruise yet). Aly wants to go to Alaska (which is one of the reasons we are going back to the Caribbean this time), and her boyfriend would also like to tag along to Alaska. We’ll have to have two staterooms for six people, but if we’re going to Alaska, we may not need a verandah. 😉
The book reviewed below takes place almost exclusively on a cruise ship. Kind of convenient that it releases just before our upcoming summer cruise…and would be a nice read on a cruise ship. 🤷🏻♀️
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐
3 Stars for The Shippers by Katherine Center
336 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication Date: May 19, 2026
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press.
Publisher’s Description
After a lifetime of being bad at love, JoJo Burton vows to solve her intimacy issues once and for all at her sister’s destination wedding on a cruise ship. Armed with pop psychology, she diagnoses herself with a fixation on the neighborhood guy who was her first crush and first kiss (and who just happens to be a newly divorced wedding guest). Determined to woo him for closure, she ropes in her childhood bestie, Cooper Watts, as her wingman. Cooper: who RSVPed no, but showed up anyway. Cooper: who moved to London without a word four years ago. Cooper: who broke her heart.
Shipboard antics abound in this witty, heart-tugging, childhood-friends-to-lovers romance, as JoJo and Cooper team up, fake flirt, slow dance, share a cabin, sing duets, get jealous, answer long-held questions, and finally, at last, discover truths about each other that will change everything.
************
Main Characters:
- JoJo (Josephine) Burton – 26 years old, lives in Texas, a former math major who teaches art, about to marry her college boyfriend and fellow math major Pearce Richmond, the middle child between Ashley and Pete
- Cooper Watts – 26 years old, JoJo’s childhood best friend, they were inseparable from age eight when Cooper moved in across the street, he unexpectedly moved to London four years ago and hasn’t talked to JoJo since
- Ashley Burton – JoJo’s older sister, getting married on a cruise ship six weeks after JoJo, works as a marketing manager for the cruise line and studying for her master’s in marriage and family therapy
- Finn Turner – 29 years old, a lawyer in Chicago, newly divorced, also grew up across the street from the Burtons, JoJo had a wild crush on him growing up, he was her first kiss when she was 10
JoJo Burton gives middle children a bad name. The main character in Katherine Center’s newest novel, JoJo tells the story of her relationship issues in the most random and chaotic way. Chaos seems to be her entire personality, and I might like her more if she weren’t so ridiculously immature.
I am a huge fan of Katherine Center. I discovered her back in 2019 when I read Things You Save in a Fire (Women Can Be Whatever They Want to Be), and I always love her books. This one fell flat for me though…and it truly pains me to say that. I wanted so much to love this one, especially since cruises are my favorite vacations.
When the story begins, Cooper arrives from London just in time to crash JoJo’s wedding (after RSVPing “no”) and helps her realize that she really doesn’t want to marry Pearce. She fake faints, calls things off, and lets Cooper drive her to the beach to escape. Cooper goes back to London less than 24 hours later, and the next time JoJo sees him is six weeks later in the boarding line for her sister’s wedding cruise (to which he also RSVPed “no”).
After JoJo’s wedding cancellation, Ashley suggests that her wedding cruise could be the answer to JoJo’s relationship issues. During her freshman year of college, Ashley mentioned the idea of sexual imprinting that she learned in her Psych 101 class. She determined that JoJo imprinted on their parents’ unsatisfying relationship and sought a neglectful mate to replace her neglectful father.
While preparing for her own wedding, Ashley mentions a new study on imprinting that she had just read—one that suggested you could imprint on a first kiss. When JoJo says that her first kiss was Finn Turner, Ashley tells JoJo that the newly divorced Finn RSVPed “yes” to the wedding. With that, she hatched a plan to get JoJo and Finn together so they could kiss…and undo the imprinting?
Personally, I think JoJo just imprinted on high school because that’s how she acts. Cooper, on the other hand, is calm and kind and mature and constant. And JoJo doesn’t deserve him.
One of the things I have loved about Center’s writing in the past is her ability to create loveable characters and genuinely funny banter, all while allowing her characters to grow. I just didn’t get that here. I feel like JoJo is supposed to be quirky and a little flaky, but she is just so immature. And she’s a horrible friend to Cooper. I had a really hard time with that.
Center also includes a subplot around JoJo’s parents that I found unnecessary and a bit unrealistic. JoJo’s dad spent 30 years being a neglectful parent (but not really), and her mom wants a divorce. He is determined to win her back on the cruise. Now I know people can change, but you don’t just change who you are in a week. There’s also a cringey storyline about Ashley’s fiancé being someone JoJo once dated in high school for a week and dumped, and the joke is that he’s still not over it. 🤨
This is a romance, so there’s definitely a happily ever after. Center tells us in her Author’s Note that “the two central characters, the knuckleheads you’re about to meet, will, after many shenanigans, fall madly in love.” So at least there’s a nice ending. All in all, this is an okay beach read…something fun while you’re lounging on the deck of your own cruise ship perhaps. Just not my favorite.
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