Book Review: People We Meet on Vacation

Oct 10

Oct 10 Book Review: People We Meet on Vacation

Book Title: People We Meet on Vacation
Author: Emily Henry
Purchase: Amazon
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Description from Goodreads:

Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.

Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.

Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.

Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

This book is a physical manifestation of my heart’s song 😍Ahhh, I just love it! Categorizing under faves of 2021, but really it’s a new all-time fave that I plan to return to again and again. I think it’s safe to say Emily Henry is a favorite author for me after awarding five stars to both Beach Read and People We Meet on Vacation.

I was nervous to pick this book up because it’s so hyped right now. Whether or not the hype is deserved, I don’t really know. I think Emily Henry is just having her moment. It’s a very traditional contemporary rom-com, much like Beach Read. I’m personally giving it five stars because:

I love watching relationships unfold that are rooted in friendship first (+ one star)
I love when those friends don’t like each other to start but grow on each other (+ another star)
After the halfway mark, I couldn’t put it down, even while knowing exactly how it would all end (there aren’t any real surprises here) (but still + another star)

It’s predictable, sure, but it gives me the same warm, fuzzy feeling as watching “Gilmore Girls” for the umpteenth time. A perfectly fun beach/vacation read. I also personally connect to these lovable characters because, well, this is exactly how I wound up with my partner. So, y’know, throw in another star for relatability.

So what else is there to love about this book? The dialogue is on point. The witty back and forth between main characters Poppy and Alex is both hilarious and feels true to a years-long relationship. The kind where you have a certain shorthand and endless supply of call-backs to running jokes like, “[Insert ridiculous item here] speaks to me.” This bit, in particular, spoke to me 😂

The unfolding of the story works really well with chapters alternating between flashbacks of past vacations—one of which ultimately resulted in a rift in the friendship—and the present day vacation where Poppy and Alex are trying to repair their relationship after two years of no communication. The mystery of what happened in Croatia hooked me from the start, but by the time we find out what happens, I don’t even care anymore because I just want Poppy and Alex to work out in the present no matter what.

The endings of rom-coms like this are basically templatized at this point, but I’m a fan of how this one works out. Both Poppy and Alex realize they have their own personal issues to work through and they take it upon themselves to figure their crap out separately before trying to be together. Add another star for normalizing therapy and being responsible for our own happiness, instead of expecting our relationships (platonic or romantic) to bear the burden of supplying our happiness. I think that brings us to all five stars.

Other honorable mentions: