Thousands of people cruise around the Hawaiian Islands every week. Anne Vipond speaks directly to this group of visitors, explaining how to get the best experience out of your Hawaiian cruise vacation.

The book begins with a very nice reference area helping you understand the basics of a cruise ship and the background of the culture and history of Hawaii. Both of these are things you might normally overlook in a Hawaii travel book - but both are really important to helping you really enjoy your vacation by cruise. The more you are prepared for how a cruise ship works - and the more you understand the background of the peoples and landscapes of Hawaii - the more meaningful your trip is.

The book goes island by island, allowing you to quickly page to whichever island you're interested in and scan through the attractions. That way you can bring the book with you on the ship, bookmark whichever island is coming up next, and scan to see what you should watch out for. There are nice color photos so you can see exactly what the lava tubes look like, what the sea arch looks like, and so on. As I visited the locations, I was impressed that the book did a great job of showing me exactly what to watch for.

The book keeps a variety of visitors in mind. It talks about which golf courses are nearby, what hiking trails are available, what the beaches are like. It indicates when you should rent a car in advance and when shuttles are available.

There is a very nice pull-out map that has an overview of Hawaii on one side, and up close detailed maps on the other side of the main islands and locations. The book has even more detailed maps of specific areas, like Volcano National Park on the Big Island.

The book is definitely not as bulky as some other Hawaii books out there - but I found this a good thing. This was something I could easily carry with me and thumb through to figure out what seemed most interesting. Then if I wanted really in depth information about one detail, I could go to my specific book to get all the full information. For example, I have the Big Island Revealed which is an entire book just on the "Big Island" of Hawaii since I really wanted to explore there. But I used this book as a guide to figure out which attractions I wanted to see, and then went to the Revealed book to get the mile marker and location and other details.

A great reference book for the cruiser to Hawaii!