People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry on May 11, 2021
Genres: Fiction / Romance / Contemporary, Fiction / Romance / Romantic Comedy, Fiction / Women
Pages: 384
Format: Paperback
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“I still have a lot to figure out, but the one thing I know is, wherever you are, that’s where I belong. I’ll never belong anywhere like I belong with you.”
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. 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.
This book was an okay read for me. Poppy and Alex’s banter is fun initially, they have chemistry, and I understand why they felt they could be themselves only with each other. This would’ve been enough to sustain a tight little love story, but here it went on and on. Traveling back to revisit each of Poppy and Alex’s summer vacations throughout the years sounds like a good concept, but I didn’t get any sense of the tastes, smells, sights, sounds, or people at their worldwide destinations. Rehashing those trips is intended to track the evolution of their relationship and build up tension as we close in on the Croatia trip, where (according to repeated foreshadowing) something awful happened that led to them to ignore each other for years afterwards. Yet, when it’s finally described, the Croatia trip was barely written on not much action. This made the plot structure fall flat for me.
I gave this book a three star-rating. Though it was not one of my favorites, it was not one of the worst reads I have had. Compared to Emily Henry novels, this was my least favorite.