The People We Meet on Vacation

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Synopsis

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?

Synopsis source: Goodreads

Review

Genre(s): Contemporary Fiction, Romance
HB&W Rating: 3 stars
View on Goodreads
Buy on Barnes & Noble, Amazon

First, let me say I love Emily Henry. Book Lovers is a favorite of mine. But this one…I’m not sure where to start with this one. I liked it, mostly, but it just wasn’t up to par with her other work in my opinion. Yes, it made me laugh, but the whole schtick just didn’t seem plausible. Yes, I know what you’re saying. Kristen, romance isn’t supposed to be realistic, it’s an ideal. Well, to that I say, yes I know and you’re right, but also, you’re wrong.

One of the things that makes the genre so popular is when the story, characters, and situations are so realistic that they are plausible and while the same thing might happen in real life, the ending isn’t guaranteed to be happy. These books give you a HEA that may or may not actually happen IRL but you’re happy about anyway because why else would you be reading this kind of book if that wasn’t your end game? Sigh. This just didn’t do it for me.

The idea is great, I love that, but miscommunication and lack of communication annoy the heck out of me and there was nothing but that in this book. Top it off with a character who was so wishy washy that she didn’t know what she wanted for dinner much less in life and all she wanted to do was whine about it and not actually work to fix it? Yeah, no. She got there in the end, but I wanted to see her character grow over the course of the book.

Also, I finished this book three days ago and am now coming back to write the review and I can’t even remember the characters’ names. I have nothing. Predictable, boring, and forgettable.

Until next time,

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