As soon as I read the synopsis for Emily Henry’s follow up to her wonderful adult romance bestseller Beach Read, I had the certain premonition I would fall in love with it. And call me psychic, because I was absolutely right.
The beauty of Beach Read lay in large part with Henry’s writing voice. There was a real warmth undercut with bittersweetness that made the characters and their central love story come to life in a deeply intimate and immersive way. People We Meet on Vacation takes that narrative voice and applies it to a story that I felt so deeply connected to, it was the bookish equivalent of love at first sight.
A romance of friends turned lovers with their own doses of heartbreak and changing feelings on the way isn’t a new invention by any stretch, but Alex and Poppy’s story is so beautifully and carefully wrought that it feels utterly unique. Emily Henry has an ability to flesh out her characters, their relationships and their vulnerabilities so intimately that they feel like real people. It’s not dramatic set pieces or wild plot points that make her stories so unique, it’s this quiet, tender realism that makes you believe this story could only have happened with these characters. We believe Alex and Poppy’s love story, their years of unspoken longing or just-missed chances, because their friendship is so convincing. Henry knows her characters so well, and is masterful in her ability to make sure we know them too. The love story at the heart of this novel is one that celebrates the beauty and intimacy that comes with knowing and relearning someone inside-and-out. It’s a tricky thing to pull off organically, but Henry excels at this, and there’s a deep generosity running through the heart of her writing that brings the reader easily along with the ebbing and flowing currents of Alex and Poppy’s relationship and let’s us fall in love right alongside them.
Aside from Alex, the other great relationship in Poppy’s life is travel. The vacations they shared together are the most tangible checkpoints in the history of their friendship, different destinations intrinsically linked with different memories and phases of their lives. As with Beach Read, there’s a definite appeal to the wanderlust that has surely only grown more and more acute over the last year, and on a simple level, there’s a wistful escapism to reading about all the different places they’ve gone. The novel does more than stringing a line of exotic locations together, however — Emily Henry evokes not just traveling, but the joy and the human appeal of it. The book explores the joy of travel and of vacations that comes from human connection, from learning new people and forging new connections. It’s a simple but wonderfully effective backdrop to Alex and Poppy’s love story which is in itself an extended kind of travel. They explore and learn each other over and over again with the same joy that they do new places, although of course their journey to — and with — each other is ultimately not a vacation, but rather a search for home.
I could wax poetic about this book in greater detail for hours, but I wouldn’t want to do anything that could delay you from pre ordering your copy right now. It’s a book that sinks right into your bones as you read it. From the first page, it makes itself right at home in your heart, and it’s there to stay. It’s another resounding victory from Emily Henry, and this book has immediately cemented itself on my ‘favourites’ shelf — and the only time it’s coming down is when I pull it out to reread again and again and again.
I was sent an eARC of this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. PEOPLE WE MEET ON VACATION releases May 11 and is available to pre-order and to add on Goodreads now.
Chaipters 