People We Meet on Vacation
People We Meet on Vacation
By: Emily Henry
[Winner of ‘Best Romance’ category of the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards Reading Challenge]
“I love being the one who makes him weird.”
This one lived up to the hype!
It’s a funny, feel-good rom-com about two best friends who clearly love each other, but it takes them decades of vacationing together to finally figure it out.
This was my first Emily Henry book.
I’m not big into romance novels, but this book focused more on their friendship and the trips they took, the banter they shared. There was clear attraction but thankfully the book wasn’t a compilation of sex scenes and fantasies.
I loved Poppy and Alex. I loved that they were weird together. Emily Henry did an awesome job writing their dialogue. It was witty and creative. And maybe it was because it also reminded me of my husband and my relationship (except with less arcades and more bars).
I’m a big fan of best friends falling in love. Even more so when they’re both weird and don’t care what normal people do.
Of course, the fact that they are male and female best friends who take vacations alone together and talk on the phone for hours is totally a not normal thing. I knew where they were going with it so I didn’t mind. But let the records show— if this is happening to you in real life, one or both of you are in love with each other, just admit it.
The book goes back and forth between ‘this summer’ and previous summers. Something happened two years prior on their trip to Croatia (where, ironically, I was supposed to go two years ago when Covid ruined that) and somehow it messed up their friendship. We start from the beginning and make our way to the fateful trip to find out why.
Once I found out he loved his cat so much I was convinced she had accidentally killed it or something and that was the ‘big thing.’ But, spoiler alert, I was wrong.
Poppy reminds me a little bit of Poppy from Trolls because she wears orange bell bottoms and she loves everything. She seems ready to break out in song or dance if the moment calls for it. And joked about rolling herself in glitter. But she is a more sarcastic, witty, and 40% Amy Schumer but in a slightly sweeter girl-next-door version.
Alex was a little harder to picture as a person because he was more reserved. I picture like a younger, muscular Danny Tanner (because tall clean-freak) with the face of Paul Rudd and the banter of Neil Patrick Harris or Seth Rogen. I don’t know, does that seem right?
It looks like it’s set to become a movie sometime in the near future but no casting has been decided as of now. I’m nervous to see who they cast and how the movie is done. I wouldn’t want them to ruin it for me.
Um. A couple other things.
I love that every time she mentions her mom it involves baked goods and cleaning. And her mom asks them about grapes that taste like cotton candy and I just discovered those this month and they blew my mind a little.
This quote: “Khakis just make a person look like they’re both pantsless and void of a personality.”
And the game Poppy played with her brothers where they named a movie and her brother tried to connect it back to Keanu Reeves within six degrees. I feel like I want to try this. And it’s definitely the type of weird, random game that we would come up with to pass time.
If all of Emily Henry’s books are like this I’ll have to keep reading them!
If you want a feel-good romance with minimal (considering the genre) content that makes you laugh, this is it.
[Content Advisory: a couple handfuls of f- and s-words; one sex scene that lasts a couple pages but at least isn’t vulgar; one other make out scene; there are a couple LGBTQ side characters]
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