Book Review #152: People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

 

Every Summer, best friends and total opposites Poppy and Alex go on holiday together - until two years ago when everything fell apart. Now Poppy has one chance to make things right. One last vacation to fix what broke between them. But can she fix them before her feelings get in the way?

I’ve had this book for ages now. I’ve opened it a few times but never went past the first page. So when I heard that a movie had been made and was coming out in January, I suddenly really wanted to read it.

I liked this book, but it definitely felt on the more average side of romance novels.

I really liked the introduction to the main characters. We fall in love with them and their relationship almost instantly.

One thing that took me out of the story was that the timeline felt really odd. The characters were using extremely modern slang during a meeting that took place 11 years ago. And while that isn’t an extremely long time ago, things evolve and it definitely felt like that conversation wouldn’t have sounded like that a decade ago. I have no idea what the present date was, but as the book was probably released in 2023/4, the dialogue in previous years didn’t always work for me.

But that being said, apart from that issue the writing in itself is great. This is the first of Henry’s books that I’ve read, but it’s clear she excels at writing relationships.

I liked going back and forth with the characters, seeing them at so many stages of their lives. This really allowed the audience to get to know them, and made it so much easier to root for them. Because however long you’re reading the story for, you feel like you’ve been waiting for these two to get together for a decade.

But as much as I liked the characters, about halfway through reading I realised that not much had happened, and nothing that had happened felt particularly significant. Yes it all helped us get to know the characters, but it just made the story feel like a documentary about their lives rather than helping the reader to get excited about the inevitable romance.

And in addition to that, the story kept teasing the incident that stopped the pair from speaking, but this went on for way too long, and when everything came out it was really underwhelming.

It’s made obvious that both characters are dealing with some kind of trauma, and this was really interesting. But the story never went into either trauma enough, and when these things were mentioned, it was always at the surface level. It would have been great for their issues to be explored a bit more.

So overall, I liked the story and am looking forward to seeing the movie version, but it all felt a bit underwhelming for me.

3/5