Well Now That Was Kind of Surprising!

 

TITLE: People We Meet on Vacation

AUTHOR: Emily Henry

PUBLISHER: Berkley Books

PUBLISHING DATE: May 11, 2021

PAGES: 364   

SOURCE: Library

FROM GOODREADS: 

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?

MY THOUGHTS: I loved Beach Read when I read it so I knew I had to give Henry's latest book a try.  I am so happy I did!  Poppy and Alex met in college but learned they grew up relatively close to one another.  They are both very different people but for some reason, their friendship works and even though Alex goes on to attend graduate school and become a teacher, and Poppy drops out of college and gets a job writing for a traveling magazine, every summer they meet up to go on vacation together.  As they get older, their trips become more extravagant, in part due to Poppy's work and company stipend.  Yet two years ago something happened and the two haven't spoken since.  Questioning her life direction and missing her friendship desperately, Poppy reaches out to Alex via text.  They slowly start communicating again so Poppy seizes the chance to go on one last vacation together.  Except this time around, she hopes it not only mends their friendship, but that it enables her to tell him how she really feels.

This is the second time I have been surprised by Henry.  I went into both books expecting a lighthearted chick-lit book, but I got a novel that was so much deeper. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with chick-lit.  While I found Poppy somewhat annoying, as the book progressed, I could see how Alex and her became such good friends.  And it doesn't hurt that she loves dogs, despite not owning one, and she has a brother named Prince because her mother was a huge fan.  And Alex was an oddball of sorts but he had a fairly tragic childhood and I enjoyed slowly learning what made him tick.

The book is told in present day interspersed with chapters discussing vacations that took place years ago.  This technique really worked for me and it isn't until near the end when the reader learns what really happened on that last vacation.  I loved all of the characters in the book from Poppy's energetic social media crazed friend, to Alex's brother and his fiancee.  

If you are looking for a summer romance that also has great character development and interesting family dynamics, then please give the book a chance.  Come on, everyone else seems to be reading it this summer so I'm here to say go ahead and jump on that hype wagon too!

RATING: 5 PAWS