Synopsis from Goodreads:
With one week to win back the best friend she might just be in love with, a travel writer plans the trip of a lifetime in this sparkling new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Beach Read.
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?
I received a copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley. It does not impact my review
People We Meet on Vacation publishes May 11, 2021.
Emily Henry’s Beach Read was one of my favorite books of 2020, so I had very high expectations for People We Meet on Vacation. While I’m not sure it will make my 2021 Favorites list, I still definitely enjoyed it.
I absolutely loved the relationship between Poppy and Alex. They had amazing banter and it was obvious how much they cared about each other. So many of their scenes just put a big smile on my face. The chapters jump around between the present and the past, where we see many of their summer trips, going back from when they first met twelve years ago. I enjoyed both timelines and being able to see the evolution of their friendship.
While I loved the humor and the romance, there were a few things that brought the story down for me. There was some subtle bashing of religion, which I found a little offensive. There was also a lot of build up to the big Croatia trip that ruined their friendship two years ago and it ended up being pretty anticlimactic to me. It was a short chapter and I expected a bit more than what actually happened. I also was a little confused about how impactful to Poppy’s life she kept saying the people she met on her travels were, when there were very few examples of that in the actual story. I can only think of a couple of examples and they left no lasting impact to me.
Overall, People We Meet on Vacation was a very cute story. It had terrific banter and several adorably romantic scenes. The characters were likable and I loved their friendship. I felt like it was a little messy at the end, though. What happened in Croatia and the fall out didn’t feel like it lived up to all the build up about it. I also felt like too much was crammed into the final chapters. Trying to make the theme of the title so important at the end when there was very little about it in the rest of the story was a little jarring. Despite that, though, this is a book that I see myself re-reading in the future.
Overall Rating (out of 5): 4 Stars