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People We Meet on Vacation
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Funny Story comes a sparkling novel that will leave you with the warm, hazy afterglow usually reserved for the best vacations.
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?
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?
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Community Reviews
This was a nice refreshing and cute read! I loved the best friends turned lovers aspect and found both poppy and Alex very relatable. I found myself smiling a lot at this book and the stories they have together over the years. I actually felt a lot of parallels to my own relationship - I am a more introverted person than my husband and early on I always felt like there was so much different between us but somehow he was the person I felt the most comfortable with and had the most fun with. I felt it when we first met in college and i knew I wanted to be with him through all of the ups and downs. life can be boring about 95% of the time because life can’t all be adventures so the reality of this love story was refreshing. I liked the storyline and the characters quite a bit but there was just no real spark with this book overall so I definitely enjoyed but its not one of my all time favorites from Emily Henry.
I’m a big fan of the “meet cute, opposites attract, we didn’t realize how much we loved each other” romantic comedy movies. And after reading some heavy fiction and nonfiction I wanted some thing light to read and this fit the bill. The story is cute, even if it is predictable. And the characters are likable. The witty banter was great but sometimes it was too much and I felt like I was reading a romantic comedy script as opposed to an honest to goodness conversation between two people who are skirting their feelings for each other because of insecurities and fear. In many ways it was a retelling of when Harry Met Sally and several of those other romantic comedies in which the men and women are friends and deny their feelings for each other until the big sweeping running through the rain or across the parking lot or through the airport climax. There wasn’t much that was original or different other than the way the story was told as it jumped back-and-forth over their 12 year friendship. It’s a perfect beach or pool-side read.
Freshman year of college, myself and 6,000 of my new classmates sat through a 90-minute set from a man who dubbed himself, "The Dating Doctor." Part stand-up, part advice, but all a bit too heavy on audience participation, The Dating Doctor left me and my friends with a great arsenal of jokes and references to kick off the college experience. And then I saw him again, and again, and again as I returned to volunteer for new student orientation for 3 years. He never changed his material much, further burning his advice into my tapestry of college memories.
Some of it I would never try in a million years, like making repeated eye contact with strangers. But some of it was actually useful, like scheduling your first dates for only an hour so you've got an out in case it goes poorly. I spent the whole book screaming at Poppy and Alex because if they had been lucky enough to hear the Dating Doctor speak their own freshman year, they could have been saved by a sage piece of wisdom that came sandwiched in between jokes about penguins and getting dumped on Thanksgiving. On the topic of trying not to ruin your friendship with someone you're into, he suggests broaching a simple question, "Have you ever thought about us being more than just friends?" And then if they say no, you laugh it off. But if they say yes, you're in. Granted, I have never tried this myself, and I am sure that it is not as easy as the Dating Doctor's well-rehearsed routine made it out to be, but knowing that one simple conversation could have resolved almost every conflict in the book was enough to make me yell at pages on at least two different occasions.
But I think that frustration, of watching helplessly as these people get in their own way, is what takes this book from just another romance to a book that speaks to me. This is my third Emily Henry read within a month, and I revel in the way she handles the complexities of not only relationships, but also just being a human person and trying to make sense of your wants and feelings and purpose. The flashback scenes were a great juxtaposition for the main, present day storyline, and I felt like I got to vacation all over the world too.
I'd take off more points if I could because I was never on my own vacation while reading, but I give this one a 4.75, rounding to 5 because this (unfortunately) isn't Storygraph.
Some of it I would never try in a million years, like making repeated eye contact with strangers. But some of it was actually useful, like scheduling your first dates for only an hour so you've got an out in case it goes poorly. I spent the whole book screaming at Poppy and Alex because if they had been lucky enough to hear the Dating Doctor speak their own freshman year, they could have been saved by a sage piece of wisdom that came sandwiched in between jokes about penguins and getting dumped on Thanksgiving. On the topic of trying not to ruin your friendship with someone you're into, he suggests broaching a simple question, "Have you ever thought about us being more than just friends?" And then if they say no, you laugh it off. But if they say yes, you're in. Granted, I have never tried this myself, and I am sure that it is not as easy as the Dating Doctor's well-rehearsed routine made it out to be, but knowing that one simple conversation could have resolved almost every conflict in the book was enough to make me yell at pages on at least two different occasions.
But I think that frustration, of watching helplessly as these people get in their own way, is what takes this book from just another romance to a book that speaks to me. This is my third Emily Henry read within a month, and I revel in the way she handles the complexities of not only relationships, but also just being a human person and trying to make sense of your wants and feelings and purpose. The flashback scenes were a great juxtaposition for the main, present day storyline, and I felt like I got to vacation all over the world too.
I'd take off more points if I could because I was never on my own vacation while reading, but I give this one a 4.75, rounding to 5 because this (unfortunately) isn't Storygraph.
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