Never Vacation with Your Ex

By: Emily Wibberley, Austin Siegemund-Broka

Narrated by: Phoebe Strole

The Summer I Turned Pretty meets People We Meet on Vacation in a YA second chance romance where the rules for getting over an ex turn out to be more complicated than they seem.

Seventeen-year-old volleyball star Kaylee Jordan lives a life of player rankings, constant training, and a carefully curated social media full of followers watching to see if she'll go pro out of high school like her famous mom. Her one refuge, and the thing she looks forward to every summer? The vacation her family spends in Malibu with the Freeman-Yus. This year, there’s only one problem: Kaylee and their son, Dean, dated for the past three months, and Kaylee just unceremoniously dumped him.

Hoping to spare them the worst summer ever, Kaylee comes to Dean with her unconventional solution: she’s going to walk him through her rules for getting over an ex. When Dean grudgingly cooperates, Kaylee’s got her work cut out for her. But helping Dean follow her own rules starts becoming difficult when the pressures of Kaylee’s family legacy and perfect life start to feel less like a plan and more like a prison…and amid warm California nights and stolen laughs, Kaylee feels herself falling for Dean for the same reasons and some new ones.

With their trip coming to an end, Kaylee has to make the complicated choice between doing what’s expected and taking a (second) chance on love.

©2023 Emily Wibberley, Austin Siegemund-Broka (P)2023 Listening Library

Critic reviews

"A moving subplot about how Kaylee lives in her three-time Olympic gold-medalist mother's shadow adds depth to her development, and it's refreshing to read a romance in which it's the girl who's the elite jock. A breezy, beachy teen love story." --Kirkus

“Developing rifts between Kaylee's and Dean's mothers and dilemmas confronting Dean's younger sister add further emotional depth to this frothy, sports-forward beach read by married creators Wibberley and Siegemund-Broka” --PW

A Definite Keeper

I bought this book on its release date two weeks ago and have already read it twice.

Since I picked up my first Wibberley-Siegemund-Broca book, I have been a huge fan. They seem to go just a little deeper with their characters than your usual romance authors.

In Never Vacation with Your Ex, the characters are so real, their issues and family dynamics, not to mention their heartbreak, are developed so intensely, I felt every nuance straight to my own heart.

On the surface, Kaylee and Dean have more than any two teens could expect—looks, talent, loving families, and the ability to love with the depth of the ocean beyond the beach house. Yet that ability to love family, friends, and one another—yes, no, maybe…--is what tears them apart, while the reader suffers and triumphs each step of the way.

After a string of excellent books, this is undoubtedly the best.