Book Review: "People We Meet on Vacation" by Emily Henry

 

4/5 stars 

*Spoiler alert!*

People We Meet on Vacation is a very heart-rending novel, yet my feelings on it were mixed. I rounded up my rating from an initial 3.5/5 stars to 4 stars because of the sheer poignancy of it, and yet I found myself exasperated by the level of miscommunication between the main characters. Even if this miscommunication was an intentional part of the narrative, I found it hard at times to suspend my disbelief. But I digress, because I ended up really liking the pairing of Alex and Poppy. 

 

Also, apparently, I’m a sucker for the best-friends-to-lovers trope, especially combined with the opposites-attract trope. Alex and Poppy are as different as can be. While Poppy is on the extroverted side, enjoying travel and meeting new people, Alex is more of a buttoned-up introvert who’d rather be reading. They meet in college as freshmen and form an unexpectedly deep bond, going on vacations whenever they can, between Poppy’s odd jobs and Alex training to be a teacher. 

 

“I'm on vacation. Vacations always end. It's the very fact that it's finite that makes traveling special. You could move to any one of those destinations you loved in small doses, and it wouldn't be the spellbinding, life-altering seven days you spend there as a guest, letting a place into your heart fully, letting it change you.” 

  

Their friendship almost seems too perfect. And then, on one vacation, everything about their dynamic changes and they find themselves unable to see each other. Until two years later, Poppy reaches out, hoping to convince Alex to take another—perhaps their last—vacation together.   

 

Now, I understand the use of time-jumps as important in establishing exposition and context for current events, but I found myself wanting more of the present narration rather than what happened to Alex and Poppy on past vacations. Again, I know why flashbacks are used, but I was impatient to know how the present vacation ended, how it would end for Alex and Poppy.    

  

“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.”

 

 

There’s commitment issues up the wazoo in this novel. For while it should be no surprise that Alex and Poppy love each other beyond friendship—see the Croatia trip—both seem to want different things. Alex wants a predictable life with white picket fences and kids back home, while Poppy would rather be anywhere else than the small town in Ohio she grew up in. Or so they think. 

“Suddenly we’re not kids anymore, and it feels like it happened overnight, so fast I didn’t have time to notice, to let go of everything that used to matter so much, to see that the old wounds that once felt like gut-level lacerations have faded to small white scars, mixed in among the stretch marks and sunspots and little divots where time has grazed against my body. 

I’ve put so much time and distance between myself and that lonely girl, and what does it matter? Here is a piece of my past, right in front of me, miles away from home. You can’t outrun yourself. Not your history, not your fears, not the parts of yourself you’re worried are wrong.”

 

 

What redeemed this book for me from 3.5 to 4 stars was, yes, the poignancy, but both Alex and Poppy learning to compromise, learning that home is a person rather than a place. No matter how many places they’ve been together, they both know these experiences only really mattered in the end because they were there together. They realize to trust in each other and their ability to bring out the best in one another.

 

 

In the end, I can’t explain all the feelings this book evokes in me, but I would just say, read it. Read People We Meet on Vacation. What a bittersweet book. 

 

Happy reading! 

 

--BookOwl