Such a sweet romance! A friends to lovers romance where you learn about the characters through twelve years of summer vacations. It's a fluffy yet satisfying story. I read it in a day. Great book for your beach vacation.

I really enjoyed this book. For a while, I had a hard time rooting for them because Alex seemed like a jerk, but this ended up being explained and making sense later on. I loved the back and forth between past and present, and think it did a great job of explaining the present-day situation.

So I have a confession to make. My name is Janet and I didn’t love Beach Read.

I know, I know. Everyone loved it. It was THE-dare I say it- beach read of the summer. It just didn’t grab me the way it grabbed so many others.

Needless to say, I started reading People We Meet On Vacation with some trepidation. What if again I didn’t love it the way everyone else did, and if so, am I broken inside?

Well, I’m here to say not only did I like People We Meet on Vacation, I LOVED it. I’ll go one further and say it’s my favorite book of the year thus far. But enough about me and how I feel about the book, you’re here because you want to know more about the book itself.

People We Meet on Vacation is the story of the unlikely friendship between Alex and Poppy. Opposites in every way, they form an enviable bond that shouldn’t work, but inexplicably does.

Although they are opposites, one thing they have in common is their desire to travel which they do every year on a shoestring budget. For the rest of the year they live, in large part, separate lives- keeping in touch via text and phone calls.

The book tells their story through rehashes of their past and current vacations. Two years prior their relationship took a hit that the reader doesn’t learn the specifics of til later on on the book. As a result, the present day vacation, and also Alex’s brother’s wedding, serves as a short window to get things right in more ways than one.

I loved Alex and Poppy’s relationship. The back and forth between past and present is a commonly used literary device, but Henry does it so well here. Not only do I feel like I’m getting to know them better with each trip, I’m also invested in the locations they are visiting.

People We Meet on Vacation serves as an example of what happens when a contemporary romance is done right. It also has a TON of laugh out loud moments and sarcastic moments that filled this sarcastic reader’s heart with glee. At this point I feel like I’m fangirling too much, so I’ll just wrap it up by saying this is one book every reader should take on vacation with them.

I'm going to need to come back and write a more thorough review at some point, but right now I have way too many feels lol. I loved the journey this book took me in, and Poppy and Alex were such amazing characters. So well rounded and relatable. I'm so happy for their HEA, but I'm also exceptionally happy that they worked on themselves separately first, and then got to the point where they could feel like they were living a healthier and happier life together.

Wow this book just wow. I absolutely adored this book. From the back and forth in time to the feeling all the feelings. This book was about love and loss and love again. The ways and ways not to do love. The yes and what if’s. There is nothing I love more than the maybe so. I had my heart in this book, the only thing I would have loved a little more was if it was told from two POVs. I would have loved to have Alex’s side of things. I loved the two timelines but I needed more from him. I will continue to get and read Emily Henry’s books because they are so good!!

Emily Henry has once again tricked me into reading an introspective novel under the guise that I would be delivered a romance. And I was delivered a romance, don't get me wrong - a delicious, heart-wrenching romance - but she also handed me Poppy Wright, someone who helped me to realize, at a point in my life where I feel overwhelmingly out of control, that "millennial ennui" is not the individualized experience I've thought it was for the past three years.

So let's break it down.

Poppy and Alex Nilsen are best friends. Or they were. Until one fateful trip to Croatia two years prior to the start of People We Meet on Vacation, the details of which Poppy skirts around for roughly 85% of the book. And then Poppy concocts a trip with Alex to try to understand where they fell off, and whether they can get back to where they were before everything went awry.

Fun times ensue, and we learn more about Poppy, Alex, their relationship, and all of the summer trips they used to take. And slowly, over the course of the book, more about who they are and what they mean to one another is revealed until we're left with the full, raw understanding of it all - that Poppy and Alex were always meant to be more than friends.

Would I recommend People We Meet on Vacation? Without a doubt, absolutely, yes. If I didn't have a full-time job, I would have finished this book in a single day. It was impossible to put down (though I did occasionally have to). All I wanted to know was whether or not everything would work out in the end. If you loved The Hating Game, consider this your next obsession. It's a beautiful friends-to-lovers romance, with a splash of existentialism.

After Beach Read and now , I've officially decided to induct Emily Henry into my Hall of Auto-Buy Authors. Welcome to the gang, Emily.

Review's note: the amount of times I accidentally typed "Poopy" while writing this review is absurd and I'd like to think that would make both Poppy and Alex laugh hysterically. Too many wine, I guess.

When Poppy and Alex meet on a ride share home from their first year of university. They shouldn’t work together, they’re just too different, but somehow they fit. Their friendship grows and every year they promise each other one thing: the Summer Trip. Every summer they’ll spend a vacation together.

So, when they drift apart and two years go by without a Summer Trip, Poppy knows they have to give it another shot. They have one week to fix their friendship, but when the feelings they’ve always had for each other return full-force, will they risk their friendship for something more?

I really loved this. I enjoyed the flashbacks, the friends to lovers. Even the angst was just the right amount of angst. Everyone needs love like Poppy and Alex.

The banter was top-notch. I loved their sense of humour and it really felt like I was part of Poppy and Alex’s friend group with all of their inside jokes. Highly recommend

Alex and Poppy couldn’t be any more different, but what started their friendship was being commuter buddies in college. Their traditional summer trip has been their thing—the thing they look forward to the most. Meeting people. Visiting new places on a budget. Experiencing it together. Until one summer, things got weird, leading them to silence for two whole years. Until Poppy decides on recreating a summer like before just like old times. Will she be able to salvage her long lost friendship?

ALL THE STARS. ALL THE FEELS. I loved this more than Beach Read, and I didn’t even think that was possibly. Henry infused so much life in Poppy’s and Alex’s characters that Poppy’s narration was absolutely perfect. The flip flop between present and past summers were great, and I personally liked that touch the most. The chemistry, the romantic development. Everything was not at all forced, and the feelings behind their actions were so real and relatable. What a fantastic opposites attract, best friends to lovers story!

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I adored Beach Read and could not wait to read this one and it did not disappoint. Wish me luck on trying to make this any way coherent.

CW: death of a parent in childbirth (past), grief, bullying (past), anxiety

I would recommend if you're looking for (SPOILERS)

-m/f friends to lovers
-opposites attract
-grump/sunshine
-only one bed
-kissing in the rain
-sick/hurt comfort
-sloooooow burrrrn
-so much pining it hurts

This book has wrecked me. Emily Henry is so talented at conveying human emotion in this perfect and relatable way that I wondered at times if she was just articulating thoughts from my own brain and saying them better. This is a book about finding your home, being scared to love, and finding your person and it scaring the crap out of you. Love is messy and Alex and Poppy are two messy people who on paper shouldn't work, but are perfect for each other. I adored their banter, their playfulness, how they just got the other one and gave the other person the room to just be themselves.

Poppy was chaotic and wonderful. A free-falling escapist I loved her internal monologue and she was a wonderful narrator. Sometimes I wanted to just give her a hug. But Alex, ooomph. Sweet, tall, jacked Alex. Secretly pinning, putting himself out there in subtle ways and just always stepping up for Poppy in the ways she needed. Honestly, where is this man I will marry him tomorrow.

I adored the flashbacks, everything was drawn out with the right amount of ughh you know it's coming and these sweet idiots how do they not see it. This is a love letter to friendship, home, travel, and just finding your place in this world and your person. Sit down, curl up with a blanket and just prepare yourself for the ride.

Rating: 5
Steam: 3

One of the books I was most excited to read this year and it did not disappoint. I thoroughly enjoyed Beach Read last year and was so excited to get this ARC to review. I am a sucker for friends turning into something else... stories. Very reminiscent of one of my favorite movies You’ve Got Mail. I also got a kick out of the travel stories. Since international travel is on hold for the time being- I loved getting a vicarious look at some of these wonderful travel stories and hearing about locations I hope to visit or revisit. Great dialogue and chemistry. I felt so connected to these characters. Plowed through this one quickly because it was so enjoyable. Will be a huge hit this summer.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest opinion.

Five Star Read!! I loved everything about this book.

The characters are complex and relatable. They are true opposites. Poppy is a wild free-spirit from a loving family. Alex is a conservative, strong and silent type. His family is broken because they lost his mother at a young age.

I loved this book not only for the characters, but also their hilarious banter and one-liners. Poppy and Alex ooze chemistry. But it is a mystery why after 10 years of friendship and travel, they haven’t taken their relationship further than friendship.

I really liked the way the story was laid out, told in chapters featuring each of their vacations alternating with present day. The reader knows something big happened on one of the trips that changed their relationship, but it is a mystery as to what it could be. As the story unfolded I fell more in love with Alex and Poppy.

I encourage you to pick up this romantic comedy that is much more than a basic romcom.

Poppy and Alex. 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? review: Last year I read Beach Read and had mixed feelings on it, but decided to give Emily Henry’s newest book a shot! I can say that without a doubt I liked this one a lot more than Beach Read! I really enjoyed getting to know Poppy and Alex. They are both complex characters and are at crossroads in their lives where they are vulnerable. Their vulnerability and imperfections paired with their banter made this friends to lovers trope even more enjoyable to me as we got to know them and their relationship with one another. I do wish we had gotten more of their relationship in the book though. It was endearing at first that they were skirting around telling each other how they felt, but it got a bit old the further into the book it went! That said, my other gripe is with the way she titles her books. Beach Read had nothing to do with the beach and this book really didn’t make sense until the last 20 pages! I had a few people share the same sentiment with me when I chatted about it on instagram! If you’re looking for a book to add to your spring list, give this one a shot. rating: 3.5 out of 5 ⭐️

This was fun and sweet. I liked the on/off relationship and the focus on travel. I felt the slow burn of the friendship turned romance!

I loved this book. I'm in the middle of finals week, and I still couldn't put it down! It was just what I needed. This romance is exactly what you expect after reading the blurbs and first few chapters, yet it's also so much more. Henry created really complex, interesting characters in Alex and Poppy - something that most in this genre lack.

Although I knew where the plot was headed, I was really drawn into the unique history and personalities of the characters. I felt like they were real people. Often when I read romances, I think of how cheesy it is that the two individuals could fall in love so easily and quickly, but Henry painted a picture of a deep knowledge of the other person through a shared history. It felt true.

I'll be buying this for the library and recommending it as a perfect summer read - light, but with surprising depth.

HJ Recommended Read!

Be ready to be swept away to locations across the globe and to root on an opposites-attract couple who start as the best of friends--and who become so very much more--in Emily Henry's People We Meet on Vacation.

I had a whole lot of fun reading Emily Henry's latest novel. It bounced back and forth between the present day, with Poppy and Alex having not seen or talked to each other for about two years, to flashback chapters starting with how they met at college twelve years ago and worked its way forward from there. I got a little lost in the timeline a couple of times and had to backtrack to the beginning of the chapter. But overall I enjoyed the way Emily Henry showed the tension and attraction between Alex and Poppy that built oh so slowly over the years. And I think it's something that was realistic. They didn't want to ruin the friendship that meant everything to them. So of course neither wanted to act on it. Instead, they ignored their chemistry and kept it as platonic as possible.

Poppy and Alex were truly opposites in almost every way, so their conversations were ridiculously fun. That is one of the areas in which Emily Henry always shines, in my humble opinion, with the dialogue she creates. Poppy was outspoken and loved to wear clothes as colorful as her namesake. She grew up in a lively household, the youngest who always felt like she didn't belong at school. Alex was a rather introverted, very studious and intelligent man--a beta hero, swoon!--who was the eldest sibling that kept the family running. But somehow Poppy and Alex balanced each other out. There was always something to debate or talk about considering their differing opinions and experiences which was highly entertaining.

I do have to admit, though, that up until about the last quarter of the book, I wasn't wholly rooting for Poppy. I liked her. It's just that she came across as a wee bit on the selfish side. Like she wanted Alex to constantly be there for her and talk about her personal/professional problems but she didn't always seem to support him. Once their entire history was laid out for us and Poppy had some epiphanies, it was much easier to cheer her and Alex on.

People We Meet on Vacation will be a wonderfully quirky beach read for romance fans. With its slow burn, friends to lovers storyline and hilarious characters you'll want to hang out with, Emily Henry charmed me all over again with her witty writing voice.

I received an ARC from NetGalley and I am happy to give my honest review.

After Beach Read, I wanted to read every single word that Emily Henry wrote. This book was no exception and did not disappointed.

Alex and Poppy have been friends since the first week of college. They just fit in a way that you know you can't force. Poppy is loud and eccentric while Alex is quiet and observant. Two peas on a pod. The book goes through several flashbacks spanning over a decade of vacations with the two. I'm not usually a fan of flashbacks but these were so seamless and built on the characters and their love for each other.

Their final vacation is 2 years after a big trip to Croatia when they stopped talking to each other. Poppy's heart is broken with the loss of her friend and is unhappy with her professional life. She decides that to regain her happiness she needs to take Alex on another vacation. He's game and so begins the most awkward vacation ever. Rideshare cars, broken A/C in an AirBNB, and a back spasm later, they come to blows about what really happened 2 years ago.

I couldn't put this book down. The characters are rich and you're rooting so hard for them both. Alex is the quintessential book boyfriend and Poppy is everyone of us. My only complaint is that I want more - I would love to have read Alex's point of view and get his take on the events that you only hear Poppy's thoughts. This is definitely going on my re-read list and I'll be eagerly waiting for the next book by Emily.

I’m confidently predicting that People We Meet on Vacation will be a runaway hit this summer, packed away in many a beach bag. Emily Henry follows her 2020 hit, Beach Read, with her newest novel, and in my opinion, an even better beach read. The college friendship between the main characters, Poppy and Alex, develops through the years revealing layers upon layers of emotion. Friendship blossoming into love and the many facets of all of these layers is at the core of their relationship. This is a beautifully written and totally engaging book which takes the reader along on many adventures and journeys with these entertaining characters. Pack your bags, take a vacation, and be sure to tuck this gem into your carry-on. You’ll be happy you did. Thank you NetGalley for this advanced eCopy.

This book activated my wanderlust and made me feel deeply invested in the characters and their happiness. This is exactly the kind of emotionally satisfying friends-to-lovers romance I've been looking for. Great characters, great settings, great fun.

Upon meeting on the first day of college nothing is more apparent than the fact that Poppy and Alex are complete opposites. She's loud, he's serious. She wear bright clothing, he wears...khakis. Poppy can't think of anything more than getting away from her small and oppressive hometown and travelling the world. Alex, wants to settle down close to his family, get married and have kids.

Somehow, Poppy and Alex form and unshakable bond. One that sees them taking an annual summer vacation with one another to all the far-off exotic locations of Poppy's dreams.

Except something happened two years ago to change the dynamic and they haven't spoken since. Now, Poppy having a crisis of faith, is determined to get back to the last place she was happy. Except her place is not a place, but a person: Alex. Poppy is determined to set things right between them and Alex's brother's upcoming wedding provides a perfect opportunity for them to get together. But are either of them ready to confront what happened and risk losing each other permanently?

After reading Emily Henry's previous book, [book:Beach Read|52867387], I just have to say she's done it again, but even better! I immediately took to Poppy and Alex. I loved their dynamic from page one. The care they have for each other just jumps off the page, and I enjoyed so much that we, as readers, got invited to witness their special bond. The inside jokes and the vulnerabilities. Really digging in and getting to know someone inside and out completely.

Of course with that comes an inevitable fear. Fear of losing all that you hold dear. I'll say that it's pretty easy to discern what went down between them two years ago. The way in which the story is laid out we get pretty much alternating chapters between present day vacation and like a countdown from the first summer back to that infamous summer two years ago. It really drives the story, as even though as I said it's easy to figure out what happened, I still wanted confirmation and I wanted to go through that journey with Poppy and Alex. In doing so, readers also begin to truly see where Poppy and Alex are coming from in their personal lives. How things have happened to them that has informed the way they treat their relationship with one another. Emily Henry just really gets to the heart of these characters. You want to see them work things out with each other, but you also want to see them work things out for themselves.

If anything, I would have loved if the story alternated between both Poppy and Alex's points of view. As it stands we're getting everything through Poppy which I understand as she's the person who is trying to get back to happy, but Alex also equally has things to work out for himself and I would have liked his side of things on a few instances.

But this book, this book will make you yearn for travel. For exploring and meeting new people and discovering new places. It will have you missing what all of us have missed in the past year and what we can hopefully get back to again soon. You'll fall into this story of friendship and love and, if you're like me, you won't want to stop until you reach the end.

Thank you #Netgalley for the advanced copy!

I was happy when I got the request to review People we Meet on Vacation, seemed like a fun summer read. And it did not disappoint! I loved following the life of Poppy and her travel career. Poppy didnt fit in growing up, but she was determined to set goals and achieve them as she grew older. In college, she met Alex. The two awkwardly grew their friendship and became vacation buddies. During their college years these vacations were often on a budget with funny experiences.

As adults, Poppy got her dream job and got her vacations paid for and well documented for a travel lifestyle magazine. With this job, she was able to bring a friend, in her case Alex. The novel bounces back and from from present time to different vacations over the years. Though there were a few years of not talking, Alex and Poppy decide to take a vacation again, this time to Palm Springs. Opposites always attract....

I recommend taking this book on vacation!