About the Book:
Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.
From the best-selling author of Beach Read comes a sparkling new novel that will leave you with the warm, hazy afterglow usually reserved for the best vacations.
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 Review:
“Like a good book or an incredible outfit, being on vacation transports you into another version of yourself.”
This is a refreshing, uplifting, warm and totally fun read. Definitely not written with the pandemic in mind but the story will absolutely put you in the mood to travel again! I feel that Julia Whelan deserves her own category here on Goodreads; I had a paperback copy but decided to listen to this on audiobook only because she was the narrator.
Poppy and Alex are complete opposites but are the best of friends. He is a by-the-book teacher and she is a travel writer (dream job, right?) They met in college and used to take one big trip together every summer. Their relationship fell apart two summers before the book begins, and Poppy is desperate to have her friend Alex back in her life again.
Poppy invites Alex on one more trip in a last-ditch effort to salvage their relationship. As their summer trip to Palm Springs turns into an absolute disaster, we get to know each of the characters and what made their relationship so special.
The story is told in two timelines. Past and present alternate until the two timelines meet in the present day and their laughable situation in sweltering Palm Springs. Emily Henry has a wonderful way of creating rich characters and I really can’t find anything to criticize about this book other than it didn’t seem to have the depth that ‘Beach Read’ had. Nonetheless I still absolutely recommend ‘People We Meet on Vacation’ for its ‘Harry Met Sally Vibes’ and fabulous settings that Poppy gets to visit for her job.
If you like audiobooks, you can’t go wrong with this one. This charming book is perfect for your summer reading or listening list!
“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.”