If you’ve seen the TV series Younger then Marriage Vacation is a book that you’re already deeply intimate with. It’s a book written by the character Pauline Turner Brooks, the estranged wife of publisher Charles Brooks. The story is a fictionalized retelling of how she, an Upper East Side mother of two, took a yearlong trip away from her family and marriage.

In the book, our heroine Kate goes to a friend’s wedding for the weekend without her husband (who had to stay behind for work). When she reconnects with her old college friends she’s reminded of who she used to be before she became a wife and mother. And, more importantly, how she had planned on being a writer—a passion that has lain dormant for the last ten years. Through a quick series of events that require some suspension of disbelief, she ends up at a zen retreat in Thailand. She’s quick to make the obvious comparison to Eat, Pray, Love, but this retreat from life is more about finding her authentic self and what that means for returning to her family.

From here the story loses some of its juiciness. It gets held up on Kate’s quest to be a “good” person, a volunteer committed to those truly in need. A great sentiment, but her constant comparisons to her old posh life and her current, more primitive, dwellings become a bit exhausting. All of which is compounded by her often tedious prose style (although said prose style does expertly match the tedium of her as a character on the show).

The novel, of course, is trying to appeal to Younger’s audience. So the story is littered with moments we’ve seen on the show, and we learn a lot about her relationship with her husband, Karl (page 58, am I right?). These juicy bits are what kept me going through the middle slog of the book, where it felt like the story was just killing time until it could ramp up to the climax of her adventures.

The novel’s success relies on how much you, as the reader, can appreciate and withstand all the meta levels of the story. Simon & Schuster published the book as a Millennial print (as it is on the show) with the author being the character from the show (although it was actually written by Jo Piazza). The book itself is a fictional retelling of a fictional marriage published in a fictional world. It’s easy to get lost in the layers of storytelling happening in the book. But it’s not necessary to grasp all the layers to enjoy it.

On the show, Pauline is seen mostly as a “villain.” She’s one of the (albeit many) obstacles between Liza and Charles getting together. Her appearance on the show is disruptive, as is her attempt to rekindle her relationship with Charles. There are only a few episodes in her two-season arc where you almost begin to get invested in her. But it’s not long until she’s back to causing trouble for the primary characters.

So it felt weird to read the book and actually like her. She presents her case well—if not a bit tooearnestly. And it is always great to see the other side of the story (think of Emily Giffin’s Something Borrowedand Something Bluenovels). It almost becomes easier to shut out thoughts of the show and just focus on the novel as a standalone entity. In which case, Marriage Vacationsucceeds in telling a compelling story that you can enjoy without having ever seen an episode of Younger. But, as a fan of the show, I did enjoy it—meta layers and all—even if I did have a hard time trying to root for her to get her happy ending.