“This novel is a ray of light in the canon of vacation lit—in Reinhardt’s hands, paradise gone wrong feels very right.” —PeopleA private Mexican villa is the backdrop to this smart, absorbing story of a milestone vacation in a tropical paradise gone wrong, wrong, wrongTwo families arrive in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for a once-in-a-lifetime vacation. Jenna has organized the trip to celebrate her … has organized the trip to celebrate her husband’s fiftieth birthday–she’s been looking forward to it for months. She’s sure everything is going to be just perfect–and the margarita refills delivered by the house staff certainly don’t hurt, either. What could go wrong?
Yet as the families settle into their vacation routines, their best friends suddenly seem like annoying strangers, and even Jenna’s reliable husband, Peter, is sharing clandestine phone calls with someone–but who? Jenna’s teenage daughter, Clem, is spending an awful lot of time with Malcolm, whose questionable rep got him expelled from school. Jenna’s dream of the ultimate celebration begins to crack and eventually crumbles completely, leaving her wondering whom she can trust, and whether her privileged life is about to be changed forever.
Readers of Emma Straub, Meg Wolitzer and Delia Ephron will love this sharply funny novel. Whether you’re putting it in your carry-on to read on the beach or looking to escape the dead-of-winter blues, Tomorrow There Will Be Sun is the perfect companion.
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Tomorrow There Will Be Sun is escapist fiction without the empty calories, a witty and wise tale of all the ways reality bites. Dana Reinhardt is the Nora Ephron we’ve all been missing.
Entertaining
Tomorrow There Will Be Sun by Dana Reinhardt was an incredibly hard book for me to assign a rating to. On one hand, I kept waiting for something really big to happen, but what actually happened was something more relatable and realistic than what I was expecting. On the other hand, it’s a thought-provoking novel that will still give you vacation vibes due to the location. The end was also a little anticlimactic, but at the same time felt like a good way to end the story while making the reader wonder. I think this book is for a very niche market of readers. You won’t love the characters, but you can’t really hate them either, and Jenna will definitely be relatable for some people.
Even though the book is set in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico I wouldn’t necessarily call this a beach read. The location was a part of the story, but Tomorrow There Will Be Sun was really more about Jenna and her internal feelings/dilemmas along with her family. She was a frustrating character due to her insecurities and controlling nature, but I couldn’t help feeling a little bad for her when it came to how her husband and daughter treated her. Not a whole lot happens in the novel, but for some reason I just could not stop reading. I did really enjoy Reinhardt’s writing style, and she managed to keep me engaged in Jenna’s story and I also liked the fact that Jenna was a writer.
As I said right away, not everyone is going to like this book, and I think you really have to be in the mood for a slower burn where there aren’t any major reveals. If you want to be introspective though and want a book that will make you think, I would still recommend Tomorrow There Will Be Sun. I thought there were a lot of good things about it, and I will definitely be looking forward to reading more from Reinhardt.
Thank you to the publisher for my advance review copy via NetGalley. All opinions and thoughts are my own.
I chose to read this book after reading the great reviews on the back cover. However I have to disagree with them all! I didn’t find it funny, witty or relatable. The characters are not really likeable, the wife is clueless, the ending strange.
3.5 stars
You know trouble is coming when you have two couples and their kids going to Puerto Vallarta to celebrate the husbands’ fiftieth birthdays and one of the wives has to decide if she wants to “start an epic battle a mere fifteen minutes into our holiday.” Why, you ask? Her husband wants to accede the master suite to his business partner, something you get the sense happens often.
Jenna narrates our story, and her husband Peter is the one all too willing to give up the good digs. Her disdain for Solly and Ingrid, Peter’s business partner and his wife, is clear in the first pages, which delivers a delightful moment of schadenfreude later in the book when Jenna realizes that the supercilious superiority she felt over Ingrid is, in fact, one of those “she is rubber, I am glue” kind of things.
Already feeling a little suspicious about her husband’s screen time, texting someone while he’s on this deluxe vacation, Jenna is primed to think the worst. It doesn’t help that her comely teenage daughter and Solly and Ingrid’s teenage son seem to be interested in each other. This only serves to put Jenna even more on edge, despite the lovely margaritas to be had on demand.
Dana Reinhardt populates this book with a bunch of people nearly impossible to like, aside from Roberto and Enrique, the villa’s attendants. I’d love to know what you think of Jenna and her pals. What did you make of Peter? Ingrid? Solly? The kids?
Reinhardt’s use of the warm, languid Puerto Vallarta setting works well. It lends itself to a heated atmosphere, both in terms of Jenna’s suspicions and some interpersonal conflicts. I may not have liked her, but I wanted to know what would happen to her.
The ending can lead to some fun debates for book clubs. If yours chooses this one, please let me know what you all thought.
The cover and premis of the story sold me on this book. Unfortunately, the story did not live up to its promise. A vacation filled with drama and mishaps.
Characters were mainly boring and unlikeable. I am a worrier, and Jenna made me look zen! Solely and Peter were immature and chauvinistic. The teenagers acted like teenagers! Ingrid, Solly’s Wife, was raising a high strung child, with no help from her husband or discipline.
I would give this author another try, the story flew off the pages. I just kept hoping something more would happen. But, by the time it did, the book was basically done.
I received an ARC of this book. Opinion is my own.
This book is a tropical-getaway fantasy, a compulsively honest story about middle age and family life, and, against all odds, a page-turner. Not a word is wasted. I loved it.
The fierce and anxious heroine of this novel is accused of “not knowing anything about anything,” but Dana Reinhardt knows everything about everything: the emotional zig-zags of travel, the complicated loyalties of longtime friends, the secrets and tensions between teenagers and their parents, and the way that a perfect vacation can turn into something far different, under the flushed and furious sun. A sunny, sharp and whip-smart book.
A smart and funny novel about what happens when a family must contend with itself in paradise. If you can’t escape to your own gorgeous villa, Tomorrow There Will Be Sun is the next best thing.
Life cannot be scripted, love may or may not be fixed, and no matter where we are, how pretty the sea or sun, reality crashes in. Reinhardt captures the heartbreak implicit in well-burnished plans immaculately in her debut novel for adults. She takes us to a villa that is open to the air and then shows us how walls get raised, and lowered, among those who think they know each other well. Tomorrow There Will Be Sun is precise, witty, and honest.
Dana Reinhardt has written a sunny subversive novel about cosseted vacationers winding their way through mine-fields (internal and external), in search of the earthly pleasures they somehow believe to be their birth right. Think of it as a beach read — apply sun block, adjust your umbrella — but when you close the book you realize, oh, I get it, there’s a tsunami on the way.
Tomorrow There Will Be Sun begins and ends with the perfectly mixed cocktail. In the pages between, Dana Reinhardt serves us an expert narrative brew of feeling characters, family intrigue, summer escape, and a twist of plot. I urge you: Drink up!
I read Tomorrow There Will Be Sun exactly how it’s meant to be read, in one big gulp, ideally sitting beneath an umbrella, with a hibiscus margarita in hand. It’s funny and wise, and delivers a gut punch that sent tears rolling down my sunburned cheeks.