Score: 5/5 Bookmarks

Steam Rating: 🍆🍆/5

Thank you to Berkley for gifting me a review copy of People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry. I loved Emily’s last book Beach Read so this one was one of my most anticipated of the year. Let me tell you, it did not disappoint. I loved it so much I bought a physical copy for myself.

Poppy and Alex have been best friends since college. They’re such different people, living very different lives, but they’re drawn together like magnets. For years they scrape together enough cash to go on one summer trip together each year, even when they live in different cities.

Two years ago, in Croatia, everything changed and they haven’t spoken since. Poppy feels Alex’s absence like a missing limb and ends up reaching out to him and going with him to Palm Springs for his brother’s wedding. At first, things are strained and weird between them after such a long time apart, but as we dip into chapters set in previous years’ trips we get to know the two of them better and it feels like they get to know each other again too.

I related to this story in so many ways—for starters the last trip I took (before Covid shut the world down) was to Palm Springs. I stayed in a little Air BnB apartment that was decorated in an over-the-top tiki theme and the air conditioning didn’t work. I’ve been to all the places Poppy and Alex visited, or tried to visit, and thanks to Emily’s fantastic writing I felt like I was there all over again. And while I visited in late February, it felt hotter than hell in that apartment come mid-afternoon, so I was sweating along with the two of them while I read the book.

Additionally, two of the best friends I’ve ever had were guys, and both of those friendships ultimately ended because they wanted more from the relationship than I did. Poppy and Alex’s story brought up a lot of memories for me, both fond and heartbreaking—but I ultimately don’t have any regrets because I’m now with my husband, best friend, and favorite travel buddy.

That’s all my long-winded way of telling you that this book had me laughing, crying, and turning the pages with fervor. It’s one you’ll definitely want to pick up this summer.

Now tell me, what’s your fondest vacation memory? Let me know in the comments.

Synopsis:

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?