Story for the Week
Before the Story for the Week, I want to wish the happiest of birthdays today to my best friend, Stephanie—frequent wine buddy, movie watcher, girls night participant, blog reader, godmother to the best thing I’ve ever created in my life. And since this post is about vacations, frequent vacation companion. 😉 Happy birthday, bestie. I love you. 🥰
I spent a lot of years feeling like I need a vacation after my vacation (When You Need a Vacation After Your Vacation). We used to take the earliest flight so we wouldn’t lose a whole day traveling. But we were always tired by the time we arrived at our destination, and then every day was planned out with something to do.
I started to suggest leaving in the afternoon after a good night’s sleep. I figured we could arrive later but not exhausted, and the end result would be the same. That never happened, so I started planning extra days off on the back end of our vacations. Corinne would go back to school. Dennis would go back to work. And I would do whatever my little heart desired that didn’t require me to get up early. 😉
Over the last several years, our vacations have taken on more of a relaxed feel. We plan one or two activities and wing it the rest of the time. Dennis was the planner. I am more inclined to just go where the day takes me. So when Corinne prepared to start her semester in Liverpool this past January, I flew out with her the week before. We planned to take a Beatles bus tour (how could we not?) and spend New Year’s Eve in a pub but otherwise just get the lay of the land. We had about four days in Liverpool before she had to be on campus.
We HAD four days. We didn’t HAVE four days.
Our flight was scheduled overnight on Saturday December 28th, connecting through London to Manchester Sunday morning the 29th. We expected to sleep on the plane, hoping to counteract at least some jetlag. Due to some mechanical problems with the plane and then the crew timing out resulting in about five hours of delay, our 6:45 p.m. flight on Saturday was rebooked for 11:15 a.m. on Sunday. So at about midnight, we headed home to sleep for a few hours so we could head back to the airport by 8:30 a.m.
Because of the reschedule, however, our arrival in London was too late for a connection to Manchester. We spent Sunday night getting our hotel vouchers, arriving at a hotel in the wee hours of the morning in line for check-in with everyone else on the flight, sleeping for a few hours, and heading back to Heathrow in the morning for a flight to Manchester.
We checked into our hotel in Manchester at about 9:00 a.m. on Monday the 30th and promptly went to sleep for about six hours. So much for four days. We took our Beatles bus tour and puttered around Liverpool a bit, but we never recovered from the exhaustion before Corinne had to be on campus and I had to head home…not delayed, thank goodness. And we never lost our luggage.
Corinne’s friend Jakub wasn’t so lucky on his trip to London in March. Jakub and Corinne started planning a weekend in London to go to a concert before she even left. He scheduled his flight for Thursday evening March 20th, so I dropped him at the airport at 3:00 p.m. He didn’t experience the flight delays we did, but there was a fire in an electrical substation near Heathrow that day, so after four hours in the air, Jakub’s flight turned back to Chicago.
He had planned to go from London to Poland the Monday after the concert, and he couldn’t be rebooked to London until Sunday. So he ended up rebooking his flight directly to Poland through Germany. Despite a delay out of Chicago and a very tight connection, he made it to Poland, but his luggage didn’t make the connection through Germany until later in the day. On his return, he made it home on time on Thursday the 27th. His luggage? The airline delivered it about 11:30 p.m. on Friday the 28th.
Jakub definitely needed a vacation after that vacation, much like Cora in the book reviewed below…whose luggage was delayed (a little unrealistically) for weeks when she went from Texas to Florida to spend a month with her sisters.
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐½
3.5 Stars for What Not to Do on Vacation by Rachel Magee
320 pages
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Publication Date: May 20, 2025
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Thomas Nelson.
Publisher’s Description
Savannah is on a mission to reconnect the Prestly sisters the best way she knows how: reliving their carefree childhood summers at the beach. She’s booked the same beach house, convinced her sisters to take the month off, and even made a bucket list to fit in all their favorite coastal fun. It’s going to be perfect…or else. (And if planning this trip has anything to do with a certain secret she’s hiding…well, let’s not dwell on that.) Sun, sand, and some sisterly bonding—what could possibly go wrong?
Enter Bianca, the baby of the family, with a huge announcement: she’s getting married! And her sisters’ reactions are…not exactly what she hoped for. But Bianca is on a mission to prove that she’s not the mess they think she is. Her grand plan? To find love for Cora, her perpetually single sister, on the same dating app where she found her fiancé. The stakes? A bet that if Cora can’t find her ‘One’ on the app, Bianca will call off her engagement. A challenge Bianca is all too ready to tackle head-on, even if it means a little conniving. Cora’s about to get swept off her feet, whether she likes it or not!
Meanwhile, Cora is rolling her eyes so hard they might get stuck. Love is a fairy tale for other people, not her. As she’s filling out her dating profile, she thinks—nope, she knows—it’ll be easy to show her sisters just how absurd this whole love thing is. So what if this Jax guy Cora just matched with is Hemsworth-brother hot? And, if his messages could be believed, maybe even slightly charming? None of this is real, anyway—love just doesn’t come easily for Cora. And she’s getting ready to prove it. She’s got this under control.
(Spoiler alert: nothing is under control.)
************
Main Characters:
- Savannah Prestly-Glasner – 34 years old, the oldest of the Prestly sisters, married with two children, suggests a month in Florida in the cottage where their family spent their summers, convinces her sisters by reminding them it was their mother’s last wish before she died
- Cora Prestly – 31-year-old professional photographer who lives in Texas, middle of the Prestly sisters, disillusioned about love and seemingly content to be single and focused on her career
- Bianca Prestly – nearly 26, youngest of the Prestly sisters, has never settled into a regular job, recently got engaged to a man she only met through an app and intends to move to Idaho at the end of the summer
- Jax Verona – black sheep of the family that owns coastal boutique hotels Padua Resorts, his work takes him out of the area for months at a time and no one seems to know what he does for a living, has a well-known reputation for having a two-date rule
- Luke Tudor – local to Sunnyside, grew up spending his summers playing with Bianca since they are around the same age, works for his family’s property management company which owns the beachside cottages where the Prestly sisters are spending the summer
What could be more relaxing than a summer at a cottage on the beach? Three sisters who spent their summers at the beach in Sunnyside, Florida, return for one month to fulfill the last wish of their mother who they lost to breast cancer ten years ago. Savannah, the oldest sister, uses their mother’s wish to convince (manipulate?) her sisters into spending a month in the cottage they shared as children.
What Cora and Bianca don’t know is that Savannah has set up the summer to be exactly like their childhood summers—first day at the beach, movie night, sand castle contest, even a color-coded chore chart. She has a reason for wanting to relive their summers, but she doesn’t tell her sisters. Bianca also has a secret that she springs on them when they arrive. She’s engaged and planning to move to Idaho at the end of the summer…with a man she’s never met in person.
Bianca clamors for her sisters’ support, so she challenges Cora to try out the app where she met her fiancé. She tells Cora that if Cora can’t find a match, she will call off her own engagement. Cora readily agrees since she has long been disenchanted by the idea of love. Upset with her sisters, Bianca invites herself out with Luke to a regular trivia night at the local bar later that evening.
During a break in the trivia, Bianca overhears Jax and his uncle talking at the next table. Jax is gunning for a VP of operations position in the family hotel chain, but his uncle tells Jax that he leaves town too often, that he wishes Jax would settle into a relationship and stick around for a while. When Jax’s uncle leaves the table, Bianca sees her opportunity. She wants Cora to match with someone on the app she used, and Jax needs a steady relationship for a month. Who better to make sure Cora matches with Jax than Cora’s sister?
Besides being a story about the sisters’ relationship, this is also a romance. It’s predictable by design, and I don’t take issue with that. I am not giving away anything by telling you that, of course, Cora and Jax are going to get together. Of course, they are going to find out about Bianca’s ulterior motive and things will fall apart. And of course, they will get their happily ever after.
It’s a cute premise, the perfect story for a summer beach read. Apparently, the author intended it as a “reimagining of The Taming of the Shrew.” It reminds me more of the movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. In the movie, Ben works for a marketing firm and needs to make a woman fall in love with him to earn the opportunity to pitch a diamond campaign. Andie writes a “how to” column for a magazine. In an effort to point out to a friend and co-worker all the things she does wrong when she first starts dating someone, Andie agrees to get a guy to dump her within ten days of starting to date. Two of Ben’s colleagues happen to hear Andie talking with her co-workers, so they select Andie as the woman he needs to sweep off her feet. You can see where this is going.
In both the book and the movie, the guy needs to keep the girl in order to benefit at work. In both the book and the movie, the girl wants the guy to break up with her. In both the book and the movie, the secret is discovered at a fancy gala and the girl storms off in a rage…even though her motives were just as bad as the guy’s. And in both the book and the movie, the guy goes after the girl because he fell in love even though he never intended to.
There were some sub-plots around Savannah and Bianca, outside of the romance, that keep the story moving. The characters are mostly realistic. Savannah plays the part of the protective oldest sister who wants everyone to believe that everything is ok. That said, I felt like she did some things that a normal person in her situation wouldn’t. Bianca exudes quirky and fun while being a little bit scattered and impulsive, but she also seemed at times a little too flaky to be so good at the things she excels at.
I went back and forth on the author’s writing style. She uses a style of describing things by pushing a lot of words together to make an adjective. I’ve done this myself in text messages, chat messages, probably even in my blog posts. It can be effective…when used sparingly.
- get-together-for-a-long-weekend kind of relationship
- everything’s-an-adventure attitude
- a don’t-kill-the-messenger gesture
- an I’m-running-out-of-patience tone
- share-your-heart-with-a-stranger hour
- an I-get-it nod
- a sorry-about-all-this shrug
- an I-don’t-get-it shrug
- a faux-innocent shrug
- a what-do-you-do? shrug (there are three of these)
There are a lot of shrugs…91 in all, which means every 3.5 pages or so. And there were a lot more non-adjective adjectives. Definitely not used sparingly.
On the flip side, I liked seeing Bianca come into her own. Luke’s niece plays a small role in the book but brings a lot of joy. And the banter between Jax and Cora made me smile more often than not. There’s an early exchange over text where he tells her “Three things you should know about me, in case they’re dealbreakers. I love hot dogs. I know I shouldn’t. I know they’re made of nothing good, held together by chemicals, and will probably kill me. But if death by hot dogs is how I go down, so be it.” It made Cora smile, and it made me smile.
I am likely to take a chance on this author again. I will probably check post-release reviews, though, rather than requesting an advance copy.
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