SUMMARY

Cover of the novel 'People We Meet on Vacation' by Emily Henry featuring two characters relaxing on loungers against a bright orange background with tropical leaves.

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?

Image and summary from Goodreads.

REVIEW

With the movie adaption coming out this month, I knew it was finally time to pick up People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry. Emily Henry has been on my “I really need to read more of her books” list for a while and I wanted to experience this story before seeing it adapted into the movie.

We follow Poppy and Alex, two complete opposites who have somehow become best friends and spend one week each year travelling together. Something happens that changed everything between them and they stop speaking for 2 years until Poppy convinces Alex to take one last vacation together.

I have a soft spot for the friends to lovers trope and this book delivered. Poppy and Alex have such an easy and believable friendship that you can’t help but root for them to be together. Cue all the tension, awkwardness and feelings they’ve both been trying to ignore. Their conversations felt natural and they bounced off each other perfectly.

The dual timeline where we go from the present to a previous summer worked really well to tell the story of how they came to no longer speak and how they are trying to repair their friendship. Normally I’m not the biggest fan of dual timeline stories however this book made sense as it helped to tell the story. I found myself saying just one more chapter way too many times when reading this book.

I loved Emily Henry’s writing style, she really knows how to capture an audience with her tone. There were so many little conversations between Poppy and Alex that made me smile and it made me feel like I was going along on their travel adventures. Emily Henry is slowly becoming one of my must read authors and I’m glad I got to experience this before seeing it come to life in the movie.

I had such a great time with this book, and I’m glad I got to experience Poppy and Alex on the page. It was funny, emotional in parts, romantic and full of chemistry that just makes you desperately want Poppy and Alex to stop dancing around each other and get just together. This was a 4 star read for me and I cannot wait to read more of Emily Henry’s works this year.