BOOK REVIEW: PEOPLE WE MEET ON VACATION

• STAR RATING:  4.5 stars
• PAGE LENGTH: 364 pages
• DATE PUBLISHED: May 11th 2021
• PUBLISHER:  Berkley 
• CONTENT WARNINGS: Confinement, panic attacks, fire
• IF YOU LIKED THIS, TRY: Book Lovers by Emily Henry, 99% Mine by Sally Thorne

SYNOPSIS

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?

People We Meet on Vacation is my second foray into Emily Henry’s writing, and I can safely say that I really like her books. Despite me saying that, Book Lovers still remains top dog in the Emily Henry pile for me. It’s going to be a hard one to beat, that’s for sure. People We Meet on Vacation is an extremely cute read, but there was just a tiny something missing for me, and I’m still not quite sure what that something could be.

(Is it Charlie Lastra? It might be Charlie Lastra.)

Even though there is no Charlie in People We Meet on Vacation, Poppy and Alex are adorable together. This is childhood-friends to lovers only…they meet in college. So not really childhood friends, but sort of? Eh, it’s close enough. Anyway. They’re really dang cute together. Co-dependent to the extreme, but adoring and there for each other when needed. (When he comes to take care of her when she’s sick? I think I audibly sighed out loud. God, that was great.) Poppy was just a tiny bit obnoxious in parts, but that’s just who she is. She’s a loud person, vibrant, friendly, and absolutely unavoidably present in every scene. Alex is much more like me — quiet, likes to read, always taking care of others.

I loved the vacations they went on together, the little glimpses of the world travel that they went on. My favorite of the bunch was New Orleans — I could really almost see myself there, right alongside them as they had fun getting wasted and discovering the city. And who hasn’t been on a bad vacation before? The ‘current’ vacation they’re on just…woof. That one was rough — until it’s not.

My biggest beef with this book is that the whole book we’re led to believe something god-awful happened two years ago, but once the reveal finally comes its…lackluster. It’s nothing that should have broken them, and it’s nothing that feels worth the build up that it was given. But regardless of that one tiny thing, People We Meet on Vacation is a really cute read. I love, love, love Emily Henry’s writing, and I can’t wait to get my hands on Beach Read.

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