Title: People We Meet On Vacation
Author: Emily Henry
Genre: Romance, contemporary romance
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Publication Date: 2021
Page count: 361
Rating:

I’m typically not much of a romance reader, but Emily Henry has my heart. This is my second novel of hers and I loved it even more than the first.

People We Meet On Vacation was beautifully executed, balancing romance and comedy perfectly. I laughed, I cried, it hit me right in the feels and had me rooting for the characters the whole way through. I loved the way the perspective shifted back and forth in time, I thought the characters were quirky and loveable, and the banter was on point. I was so emotionally invested that I felt like I couldn’t put this book down until I had definitive closure, which is a reader’s high I am literally always chasing.

I described Henry’s Book Lovers as sunshine in literary form, but People We Meet On Vacation was more than that. It was a warm blanket wrapped around your soul while you’re snuggled up for a life chat with a good friend. It was a genuine pleasure to read and a story that will stick with me for a long time.

Fair warning: spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn’t read this book.

Book Review: People We Meet On Vacation by Emily Henry

People We Meet on Vacation opens five summers ago with Poppy and Alex, two dramatically different best friends who spend their summer breaks travelling together. From their first interaction, it’s clear that while they share a strong bond, their personalities couldn’t be more different. Alex is a shy recluse who has very specific tastes and who, when asked if he goes out often, bluntly states he does not as he has a cat with medical needs who requires a lot of attention. Poppy, on the other hand, is eccentricity personified. She’s outgoing and spontaneous, usually dressed in a loud vintage jumpsuit or outfit, and always ready for a party. Despite these differences, the two are drawn to each other in a way that brings out the best in each of them. Just as you’re beginning to see this though, the plot jumps forward five summers to Poppy in the present day, who hasn’t spoken to Alex in two years.

Present-day Poppy, now located in New York City, is a travel writer for a major luxury lifestyle brand called R&R. While her own travel blog and influencer activities were initially about budget travel, originally born of the trips taken with Alex when they were in university, she’s since transitioned into a prestigious role that allows her to travel around the globe on the company’s dime.

Despite this though, Poppy finds herself in a massive rut. Devoid of any creative inspiration, she confides in her friend Rachel, a fellow influencer, who notes that perhaps her rut is because she’s achieved her major goals. She now travels professionally and luxuriously; she’s compensated well and has a beautiful apartment; she essentially holds all of the things that she’d been working towards. Rachel asks Poppy when she was last happy and without hesitation, Poppy realizes that it was when she was last in touch with Alex. This launches her into reconnecting with Alex and inviting him to travel with her once again.

Poppy agrees to meet Alex in Palm Springs so that they can vacation prior to his brother’s wedding in the same location, pitching that they turn a work trip into a fun trip just like they used to. However, when she pitches the Palm Springs trip to her boss, R&R refuses her the option to use it as a work trip. She then lies to Alex and says it’s been approved, deciding to finance the trip herself without telling him. This results in her booking a trip that brings them back to the budget travel they’d started out with, and she hopes it will allow them the opportunity to reconnect and rekindle their friendship.

From here, the plot unfolds through Poppy and Alex’s present-day vacation and through flashbacks of vacations of years past. When they reconnect, it’s clear that they both still care deeply for each other, but the ghosts of their past follow them around, making it incredibly awkward as they try to side-step the elephant that’s always in the room. You’re never quite sure what exactly unfolded between them that created the massive rift, though towards the end you learn that it has to do with them hooking up in some capacity, before the big reveal of what actually happened towards the very end of the book. Regardless, it’s obvious that the event changed the easy-going dynamic that they’d carried when they first became friends.

Despite Poppy’s best efforts to recreate some of the magic of their previous vacations, Palm Springs becomes the vacation from hell. Everything that can go wrong does, and the stress of the events, combined with the mounting tension between them, forces Poppy and Alex into direct conflict. Unable to continue to avoid what drove them apart two years ago, they’re forced to face it head-on, grappling not just with the events of that fateful night, but with ten years worth of love and complicated relationship dynamics. They’ll have to decide whether what they have can be salvaged and whether they’ll move forward together or apart.

There was so much to love about People We Meet On Vacation, beginning with the actual plot itself. The concept of two best friends who meet up once a year to do a vacation of their dreams was really fun and whimsical. I’ve been fortunate to do a lot of travelling myself and Henry’s depiction of the ups and downs of budget travel was really relatable and was the perfect backdrop for the developing relationship between Alex and Poppy.

Speaking of which, Alex and Poppy’s relationship was, without a doubt, the most enjoyable aspect of the book. While in many ways they seem diametrically opposed, their love for each other, and their desire to see the other happy, brings out the best (and sometimes the worst) parts of their personalities. Their dynamic is, at times, messy and raw. Through the perspective shifts over the years, you see the joy and the ugliness of trying to work through their feelings and emotions in real-time, and the impacts it has on the other relationships in their lives.

I was always rooting for Poppy and Alex, but there were moments when I wasn’t sure I should be. They obviously held a lot of love for each other, but whether they were actually good for each other was harder to pinpoint and felt so authentic to what being young and in love is often like. It’s emotional and difficult and sometimes, you hurt each other without even trying because you just can’t articulate what’s going on and why you’re feeling the way that you are. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you care for a person, they still might not be right for you, or the timing might still be off. Layer in the fear of rejection, of being hurt, and it’s obvious and heartbreaking to see why it’s so difficult for them to move through their emotions and make actual decisions about what to do with their relationship.

Henry has a real talent for creating quirky, romcom stories that are both very funny and emotionally gripping. There were so many aspects to this book that I loved that it was difficult for me to put down. People We Meet On Vacation is certainly my favourite romance book that I’ve read in quite some time and one that I’ll be recommending indefinitely.