Emily Henry writes stories about love and family for both teens and adults. She studied creative writing at Hope College and the New York Center for Art & Media Studies, and now spends most of her time in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the part of Kentucky just beneath it. You can find more of my reviews of Emily's works here.
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 take 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 that 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 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?
Emily Henry recently shared some of her biggest fears about People We Meet on Vacation on an Instagram post, saying that she was so "worried [readers] would hate Poppy!" Henry thought that she "took on [Poppy's] fears too much—that she'd be too weird or annoying or selfish or flighty to be loved." But, in fact, Poppy might have been one of the most relatable female main characters of a romance novel I'd ever read. It was just those things—her selfish desires, her career mindset, her weirdness—that allowed me to see myself in her. Maybe not exactly the same desires or career or weird interests were shared, but certainly a character with all of those human flaws on her sleeve made her easy to love and relate to. Henry said that "we all long to be loved: not because our flaws are hidden but because we're so fully known." That is exactly the mood of this novel. By the end, you can truly see Poppy come to that realization about herself, and about what love really is. Poppy was the perfect main character for the novel, and I'm so glad that Henry decided to let her shine. I think often in the contemporary romance genre, authors will split POV between their main female and male leads; not that they do it poorly, but I do believe it splits the focus, and thus doesn't allow the novel to reach its fullest potential. Henry decided to keep the entire novel in Poppy's POV, which is what allows readers to so easily connect with her, and to start to feel like this isn't just Poppy's story, but our own. This is also what allows the ending of the novel to be so powerful, and so true; we never get to see inside someone else's head, and we have to find a path that leads us to another person's thought process usually without a guide map. Having Poppy go through that process to get to her happy ending was (dare I say) inspired.
Henry takes the classic friends to lovers trope and turns it on its head. The opposites attract plus slow burn on top of that made this a romance you could easily get invested in on page one (I know I was invested that early!). I'm just starting to break into contemporary romance, but I have noticed that there seems to be a lot of authors deciding to have their main romantic pair hook up early on in the book, and then the rest of the novel is exploring how to make the relationship work. Not that the premise is bad, or can't be done uniquely, but I was so thankful Henry did not follow that pattern. Instead, readers are working up to this reveal of what happened between Alex and Poppy two years ago. Because readers don't have that knowledge, the romance feels like a first-time-for-them slow burn friends to lovers. The overall effect is rather stunning. As we are watching their relationship build from the ground-up, we are also watching how the present-day Alex and Poppy are rebuilding their friendship to get back to the way things used to be. All of this is, of course, peppered with vacation mishaps and missed chances, and everything we all love about friends-to-lovers, slow burn, opposites attract, missed opportunities romances. After finishing, I definitely felt like the romance and the pacing of it were inspired a lot by When Harry Met Sally (a theory Henry more or less confirms in the reader's guide), but she made it uniquely her own.
Emily Henry writes with this brilliant lightness, so much so that you start to smile when reading her novels and you don't even realize you're doing it. I was laughing at (most) parts of the novel, and then falling deep into the thought pit with Poppy during other moments. Her signature humor and heart were present on every single page. Because her characters are so real and authentic, all the way to incredible details, readers get this experience where they truly feel like they know the characters. Henry's writing is some of my favorite (her other books are also fabulous, trust me), but I don't think any of them have made me smile as much as People We Meet on Vacation. One of my favorite narrative decisions was the way Henry told the story from two vantage points: one from the present-day Poppy, and the other from the past-Poppy. Chapters alternate between "this summer" and "xx summers ago." This allows Poppy to share from her previous experience what meeting and becoming friends with Alex looked like, and how they used to vacation together—without present-Poppy constantly summarizing the past or flashing back to it. This, more than anything, is what allows us to chart Poppy's character growth throughout the novel, and what allows us to get super invested in the romance between Poppy and Alex.
I did want to point out something else: Henry's ability to expertly weave very relevant conversations on what it means to be an Adult in a very contemporary, lighthearted contemporary romance novel. You see more of this at the end: when Poppy realizes she is burnout and no longer happy, when she decides to do something about it (yay, therapy!), and when she finally learns how to not kill a plant. Either way, wherever you decide to point to to show that Henry includes these conversations, they're there. The best part about that is, this book doesn't do anything for escapism. Yes, sometimes that's why we pick up a book; but Henry shows us that fantasy and traveling and escapism can't really solve our problems. That one day, things don't just miraculously click together and solves all your problems. That that is just a fantasy, and that if one really wants to get back out there, it requires a lot of work and introspective thinking. I was excited to see that Poppy went to therapy, and I almost wish we had one more scene of that in the novel. Nonetheless, the fact that it was in there was a great way to show that we all need help at some point, and need to learn how to ask for guidance for the right path. Poppy taking action is such a big turning point for her, and the way Henry depicts that turn is both real for Poppy, and real for readers.
(One last note: I'm convinced Poppy's small town is based on the town in Ohio that I live right next to! As a fellow Ohioan, who actually met Emily Henry in Cincinnati a few years ago, I have to say that all the cracks at Ohio were perfect and downright hilarious!)
I hope Emily Henry never stops writing! I can't wait to learn what she's been up to lately, and to read whatever book she is publishing next. But in the meantime, you can find more of my reviews of Emily's works here!
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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