Title: People We Meet on Vacation

Author: Emily Henry

Publisher: Berkley 2021

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 382

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Modern Mrs. Darcy; Seasonal TBR

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’ve seen so many mixed reviews of this book. As in, if you liked Emily Henry’s first book Beach Read, you won’t like this one and vice versa. Somehow I fall into the very tiny camp of really really loving both of them. At first glance, we get a straight up romantic comedy with flawed but lovable characters and a slightly exaggerated plot. Seems on par with the rest of them. But then Henry really infuses her characters with very real insecurities and problems. We see two people who, on paper, shouldn’t be together and yet we know that they should. We see them struggle with events and people from their past. We see them attempt to communicate, but often do it wrong or make some missteps that lead to more obstacles. And finally, we know that their story will have a resolution. It may not be a HEA, but I don’t always need those anyway. We get some kind of understanding with the characters. I read my fluffy romances that I know will end in a HEA. But I also really love these real romances where we everything (well, almost everything) could happen in our world. Emily Henry is definitely going on my must-read list.

Next up on the TBR pile: