People We Meet On Vacation by Emily Henry | Book Review
Best friends Alex and Poppy traveled together every summer until a falling out. They get one more chance to make things right on vacation
My two favorite movies about love are “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and “500 Days of Summer.” If you’ve seen either or both of these (they are both old, so if I’m spoiling them for you, that’s your fault) you know that the main characters do not end up together in the end. And yet, that is realistic. How many people do we get to know, date, kiss, and NOT end up with. Sometimes I think I might like those stories better.
But with so many romance books out there, statistically there have to be some that I enjoy. And since I’ve picked reading back up, I’ve tried a number of them on for size. I find that the majority of romances make me cringe due to unrealistic plot lines, cheesy dialogue, and awkward sex scenes. I am definitely not a smut reader. From my experience, the smuttier the book is, the less time the author has spent thinking of the ACTUAL plot.
I had an inkling that when I found a romance I enjoyed, it would be by Emily Henry. I’d read three of her other books and rated them relatively high compared to others in the genre - three stars for “Happy Place,” four for “Beach Read,” and four and a half for “Book Lovers.” I guess I just needed to find the right plot and the right chemistry.
And then I started “People We Meet on Vacation.”
To be honest, the beginning didn’t hook me right away. I wondered if it was going to be a DNF for me in the first few chapters. But the first few chapters contain very little dialogue between the two main characters, Poppy and Alex. And for me, the absolute heart of this book was the banter between the two characters. Once we started to see their conversations - both in the present day and in flashbacks, it started to get good.
“People We Meet on Vacation” is about two best friends who met in college and have for the past decade, taken a trip together once a year. It started when they were young, poor, and single, and continued even when they were in relationships, had moved cities, and gotten jobs as a travel writer and teacher, respectively. But two years ago, something happened between the two of them, and now they don’t talk. Poppy is missing Alex and feeling claustrophobic in her New York City apartment and fancy job.
On a whim, she texts Alex and asks him to go on one more trip with her. To her surprise, he says yes.
“Maybe things can always get better between people who want to do a good job loving each other. Maybe that’s all it takes.”
They plan a trip to Palm Springs that begins with a few days of sightseeing and ends with Alex’s brother’s wedding and all related wedding events. Poppy’s company won’t cover the trip, so she lies and tells Alex that the magazine wants her to get back to her roots and write about Palm Springs on the cheap. She will do ANYTHING to remind Alex how much fun they have always had traveling.
But the trip is a disaster. The pool is crowded and later drained due to diarrhea. The apartment they rented has no AC and the weather is staggeringly hot. Museums are closed, Alex has a back emergency, and
Intertwined in the present-day story in “People We Meet on Vacation” are stories of trips past, from partying with hippies in Vancouver to dancing in the street in New Orleans. Along the way, we get a constant will-they-or-won’t-they vibe, and it’s clear that there is love between the two - but is it romantic love? (Many, many times, it is very clear to the reader that, duh, of course it is.)
I’m actually not going to spoil the ending of this, because I think the book does a really good job of allowing it to play out. I like that this book feels like it could actually happen. Who hasn’t had a friendship with edges that were blurry? Who hasn’t tried to use travel to leave their worries behind and pretend to be someone else?
I’ve also realized that Emily Henry’s open-door but not over-the-top approach is ideal for the level of spice in a book for me. The intimate scenes were sexy without Emily having to come up with 230 unique names for genitals. No one used weird nonsensical nicknames only in the bedroom.
“I hope this book carries you somewhere magical. I hope it lest you feel ocean breezes in your hair and smell spilled beer on a karaoke bar’s floor. And then I hope it brings you back. That it brings you home, and it fills you with ferocious gratitude for the people you love. Because, really, it’s less about the places we go than the people we meet along the way. But most of all, it’s about the ones who stay, who become home.”
While “People We Meet on Vacation” wasn’t a perfect book (Sarah was kind of a weird character. I know why she was needed, but she didn’t add much to the story), it was very sweet and entertaining for me. I was rooting for the two main characters the entire time and enjoyed all of the descriptions of the places they went and the people they met. Maybe my extreme wanderlust as I stare out into the snowy night has something to do with this, but this book was truly a five-star read.
