People We Meet on Vacation is one of my most anticipated reads of the year, and though it didn’t pull me in at first, it definitely did not disappoint.

Emily Henry has a way of writing that is both hilarious and emotionally charged. I feel the characters she creates in my heart and soul.

I loved how she wrote the book - alternating between present day and all of Alex and Poppy’s previous summer trips. It added layer upon layer to them as characters and to the relationship as a whole.

The last few chapters, when both characters are given the chance to open up about their feelings, are beautifully heart-wrenching and raw.

I am dying to dive into Emily Henry’s backlist now!

I have been in desperate need of this exact combination of opposites attract and Emily Henry has served us!!!


Poppy and Alex have an unlikely friendship. Poppy is free spirited, quirky and outgoing. Alex is quiet and prefers to stay indoors with a book.

They meet during orientation week in college and become friends after an awkward car ride home.

After college they mostly live far apart however every summer they take a trip together and go on exciting adventures.

Until one summer, everything falls apart.

Now, after two years of not talking, Poppy is determined to fix things with Alex. She manages to persuade him to go on one last vacation where she has one week to convince Alex to give their friendship another go.



Beach Read was one of my absolute favourite reads of 2020. So i went into this one with my fingers crossed, peaking through one eye, just in case it didnt live up to Beach Read.

I cannot put into words how ECSTATIC i was to find that it surpassed my hopes.


Its scary how perfect this book was (for me). I feel like the author stole my dreams (like the giant in the bfg hehehheheh) of the 💕perfect romance book💕 and picked every single trope that i loved and mashed it into one book.


Here are the tropes this book included: best friends to lovers (the superior trope). Grumpy/sunshine. witty banter. there's only one bed. opposites attract. slow burn. lots of yearning and pining. TENSION FOR DAYS.


The writing was like a bowl of chocolate mousse. Smooth, lovely and addictive.

After the first spoonful (or in this case: page) i could not put it down!


We follow their friendship from the day they met with chapters alternating between past and present.

At the time i read this (January 2021) i had been in lockdown for almost 10 months.
And when i tell you i was living vicariously through Alex and Poppy 😉🚣‍♀️. I felt like i was there with them visiting these beautiful places. ((Lowkey jealous of them tbh 💅🏽 ))


Poppy was so cute and i loved her so much. I found some parts of her so relatable and i just wanted her to be happy.

Alex was.... *whispers*.... everythingggggggg.
My sweet cinnamon roll introvert. *weeps* i want him 😭.

Y'all can thirst all you want over your smirking badboys. Just leave Alex with me mmkay?


I really enjoyed the chapters set in the Past. We get to see Poppy and Alexs' friendship grow and it was beautiful to see how much they cared for each other before romantic feelings came into play.

And then the Present chapters were filled with tension and yearning. *dies*


People We Meet on Vacation made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me 🥰'aawwwwwwww'🥰 - just,, ALL THE FEELS

In conclusion, this book was *chefs kiss* from beginning to end and i wish i had a physical copy so i can highlight all my favourite parts and stain the pages with my tears of happiness.

Everything Emily Henry writes is pure gold. I can’t wait to buy this when it comes out here shortly. I devoured this story.

Is it weird to say that this book is brilliant while acknowledging that it didn’t do a lot for me, emotionally speaking? Like I admire a great deal in the execution, but I also didn’t... love it. I have no idea how to explain myself. I think Emily Henry is a good writer and this is just one of those inexplicable reader-writer mismatches.

The friends-to-lovers tension is EXCRUCIATING. It’s one of those books where the couple is in love the entire time (not just the present timeline, but for the past ten years) but believe it’s unrequited while dating other people. Cue that gleeful Marie Kondo “I love mess” gif. The romance hit its peak during the NYC sickbed scene, imo. Major kudos to Emily Henry for torturing this couple with broken thermometers and back ailments in the admirable mission to enable Only One Bed.

Not a big fan of flashbacks structure (this is a me thing) and I glazed over the travel descriptions (which is... a lot of the book). 😬 The last third fizzled out and never reclaimed the rush of the balcony scene. I definitely don’t regret reading this (it was entertaining enough) but it’s not going to stick with me. I do think everyone else will love it, so check it out!

Emily Henry may be my new favorite romance writer. I loved Beach Read and am so glad her newest met my expectations. This book, like Beach Read ,gives me everything I want in romance, witty dialogue, funny banter, nothing overly dramatic, and feelings that make my heart grow in size as
I flip the pages. . Her stories give me the same satisfaction I get after watching the perfectly sweet rom com. In fact, maybe they should start making these into movies.

I continue to just LOVE Emily Henry's writing style. It is funny, moving, and engrossing, and I think I'd be hard pressed not to like any book of hers pretty well. This book really moved me with its exploration of "millenial ennui"... aka the tough time people of my generation have had reconciling narratives around what adulthood is like vs. the realities of the world we have found ourselves in. While I really loved our main characters Poppy & Alex, and I really liked them together, their romance was probably the part of this that missed a bit for me. I honestly wish she had leaned fully into the "When Harry Met Sally" inspiration and had the story be fully linear- I think I would have enjoyed the build up to their relationship better with that structure. Still, I continue to be impressed with this author and would definitely recommend!

“I didn’t know regular life could feel like this, like a vacation you don’t have to go home from.”

I LOVED THIS BOOK and I don’t want you to have to wait for this whole review to know it! I read Beach Read in January and absolutely adored it so when I learned NetGalley was a thing I sprinted to request People We Meet on Vacation and literally squealed when I got approved.

Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book! It’s the perfect millennial read - it talks tinder bios, Instagram influencers, traveling on a budget, the desire to keep switching careers, therapy, and all the things! And the love story!! I think friends to lovers just became my new favorite trope. As with Beach Read the banter is this book was witty and believable. This book made me laugh out loud and I couldn’t get enough. I easily related to the characters, I rooted for them, I wanted to hug them, I wanted to slap them, and I now consider them my friends.

This is clearly a 5+ star read for me! I already had it preordered and now I *really* can’t wait for the physical copy to come in to add to my library because I’m certain I’ll read it again someday.

Thank you to @netgalley and @berkleypub for this copy! Order yours now, it’s out May 11th!

In Emily Henry’s follow up to the popular BEACH READ,Alex and Poppy are an unlikely pair of best friends from the same hometown, but with very different backgrounds and goals. Poppy’s goal has always been to travel the world, and while Alex doesn’t mind their sleepy Ohio town. Poppy has a boisterous, loving family, while Alex lost his mother at a young age. But, their friendship develops over the years, Especially on their annual summer trips. Eventually it’s clear to everyone except Poppy and Alex that there is more than friendship going on.
The text alternates between the present summer and their trips of the past. We know that things fell apart in Croatia, but with all the buildup, I expected the events of Croatia to be more than just that they almost hooked up, but didn’t.
Still, I really enjoyed Poppy and Alex’s relationship, and was thrilled with the happy ending. This is mostly a fun and breezy read. The author admits that the book is an homage to WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, so if you are a fan of that movie, you will probably enjoy this book.

Add People We Meet On Vacation by Emily Henry to your summer reading list! This best friends to lovers story was perfect. I loved the alternating timelines and the way this book and their backstory unfolded. Alex and Poppy were fantastic together. And I’m a sucker for the opposites attract storyline. Now I just need things to open up so I can go on vacation! 💖💖💖

Thank you so much to Berkley Romance and Netgalley for the gifted book.

Poppy and Alex are total opposites and best friends. Every summer they go on a vacation together. It was their favorite tradition... until two years ago when everything went wrong. This story begins two years after “the incident” and is told in alternating timelines between present day and all the past years vacations.

Oh my goodness, did I love this book! I *dare* you to read this without smiling!

This book had probably my biggest trope pet peeve - a mysterious event that’s happened in the past, but the reader is in the dark about and yet IT WORKED! I was so drawn into the story that I was more than happy to wait it out and see what went wrong.

The dialogue is witty and it’s the slowest of slow burns. I could relate so much to Poppy - to her feeling the need to escape and travel, to always have new experiences and to meet new people. That’s how I spent a good deal of my own 20s and I enjoyed following on her journey of seeking contentment.

I loved it and it’s such a great read for some armchair travel!

3.5/ 5 stars.

Thank you to the publisher for the early review copy.

I absolutely adored Beach Read and had high expectations for this book. Unfortunately I was a little let down. I like the characters Alex and Poppy. And reading about their vacations were kind of cool. I liked the idea of the story, just not the full execution. But we had full chapters that were flashbacks to previous vacations. And sometimes there were mini flashbacks in those flashbacks as well as mini flashbacks in the present chapters. It was just a bit too much flashback and I found myself skimming the previous vacation chapters aside from the one I cared about that was alluded to multiple times.

I'm probably just being picky because I'm in a reading slump, BUT I still enjoyed this book and will probably recommend.

Thank you to Berkley and NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Though I am notably easy to please when it comes to romance, Emily Henry has blown me away with this one. I am the first to note that friends-to-lovers is really hard, but I really think she nailed it with this one. I was highlighting sentence after sentence, thinking about how the big picture of this book was resonating with me so much. Beach Read -- one of my favorite books of last year -- felt like a ray of sunshine in the worst summer of my life, and People We Meet on Vacation is just a breath of fresh air, a warm hug, a rainstorm in a drought. I cried through most of it, and can't wait for everyone to read it.

We've got Poppy (great name) and Alex, unlikely best friends who met in college as anything but. They're opposites on the outside, but deep down they've got the same fears, hopes, loves, as many people who are drawn to each other do. And so we get the present day duo -- separated for two years after a mysterious incident on one of their yearly Summer Trips -- going on a trip as Poppy attempts to salvage their friendship. Told in dual timelines from their first vacation backward to the disastrous one interspersed with the present day, Henry gives us a great picture of the two and how they have grown around each other for a decade. I loved the layout and plotting of this and felt like yes, I was waiting for the big reveal, but I also didn't want it to end.

The biggest thing for me was this book made me so emotional. It made me think about traveling and meeting strangers and all the things we have lost in the last year that we most certainly took for granted before. It made me think about loss and fear and love and home and what all of those mean to me. It made me yearn for close friendship and contact and even small disasters as long as I was going through them with someone I loved. It was so tender, from start to finish, and I just can't wait to read it again.

5 stars for me. I'll read anything Emily Henry writes forever.

I knew after reading Beach Read that I would, henceforth, have to read everything Emily Henry comes out with. She has now become one of my favorite and most anticipated authors to read.

Poppy has hit a wall. She has completed all her life goals and yet feels unfulfilled. Out with her best friend, Rachel, she pinpoints back to when she was last happy.... on a vacation with her best friend Alex Nilsen. But it's been two years since they've talked. In a last ditch effort, she convinces Alex to go on a vacation like in the beginning - on a shoestring budget.

The harder Poppy works to recreate the magic the harder things seem to work against them.

People We Meet on Vacation has everything I look for in a book. It contains moments of levity and humor. The way in which she captures the most common of relationship complexities is beautiful. I felt ensnared from the first page as it dances between present time and vacations of the past 12 years. The beauty of watching their relationship dance across time is enthralling.

You should definitely one-click this book - you won't be disappointed.

When Harry Met Sally but with more traveling. Thank you @berkleyromance for this gifted eARC!!!

Picture this: Long drives with the windows rolled down. Running across the airport to catch a flight. Strolling down the streets of a new town. Long nights spent laughing with your best friend. Laying tangled in bed with the person that makes your heart skip.

I laughed, I cried, I felt all the warm fuzzy feelings! Basically, what I’m trying to say is I completely fell in love with this book! I adored Alex and Poppy and their witty banter! I loved the grumpy/ sunshine dynamic they had going on. Their chemistry was *chefs kiss* !!

Read if you’ve been itching to travel again. If you like opposites attract, friends to lovers, books that span years, and books told in “then” & “now.”

I absolutely LOVE Emily Henry's writing style. Her ability to really create a story and fully develop characters is phenomenal (even minor characters). I fell in love with Beach Read so I had to get my hands on People We Meet on Vacation!

Poppy & Alex have been best friends over the last 10 years and keep in touch daily while Poppy lives in NYC and Alex lives in their hometown of Ohio. Every summer they travel to some fun and exotic location essentially for free since Poppy works at a travel magazine called R + R. The story is told in different stages, each chapter is either dedicated to the 'current summer vacation' or one of the past 10 year summer vacations. Throughout the entire book you're told about a vacation that was 2 years ago where everything changed and their friendship essentially halted. The entire book you're anxiously awaiting to see what happened! But come to find out it was almost a let down. I found it to be frustrating that two individuals who are obviously in love and in their thirties couldn't communicate this to each other. I honestly just wanted to shake both Poppy & Alex. I loved Poppy's character, she's smart, witty, and sassy. But I wanted them to truly be together and honest with each other. If you're looking for a quick summer romance read this is your book, but it isn't my favorite of this year! I think I preferred Beach Read to this one!

Thank you to NetGalley & Berkley publishing group for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Publication date: 5/11/21

I’m on the fence on how to to rate this, so I’ll just keep it in the middle for now and maybe up it later.

Emily is a fantastic writer and I just loved Poppy and the opposites attract she had with Alex.

But a book having a “secret” to why they haven’t talked for two years after ten years of friendship for basically the whole book paired with the time jumps just made me super anxious the whole time?

The travel aspects of this were fantastic and I loved how we got to travel with Poppy and Alex around all these cool places. It balanced out the heavier topics of loss, bullying, and unhappiness Poppy/Alex faced along with their fantastic banter.

The first book I read by Emily Henry was Beach Read and it was amazing! I love her ability to create such real characters with depth and relatable internal struggles. Then I read A Million Junes. It was not for me and didn’t even finish the book! Because of this, I was super on the fence about this book, however, it was definitely more like Beach Reads in that the characters were very real and the lessons about love, friendship and owning your own happiness are so relevant in this day and age! Definitely worth reading if you enjoyed Beach Reads!

Hands down the best book I've read all year! I know we're only 3 months in, but dang this was good! I really liked Beach Read so I was excited for People We Meet on Vacation! Let me just tell you, it was so much better than I expected! I couldn't put it down. I loved the Alex and Poppy, I loved their adventures, and I absolutely loved all of the side characters they met along the way. This was such a fun book and it is definitely the ultimate summer read. I will be singing about this book for months and months to come. Thank you Netgalley for sending this book in exchange for an honest review.

An achingly real treatise on the power of friendship and love told in a warm non-linear way and highlighting the foibles and triumphs of two people who are destined to recognize that they've found their soulmate. Henry reigns at friends to lovers and Poppy and Alex's travels -- highlighted through years of annual trips---showcase the small ways these two imperfectly brilliant and humorous people are unintentionally navigating toward their own happily ever after. But that trail is rarely smooth and --here-- finds them reconnecting at a wedding after time and silence has sliced them apart. There's a reason that Henry's accessible writing, soulful takes on the fallacies of the human condition and beautifully vulnerable characters keep her high in bookish visibility. This is, I think, an even more daring offering than Beach Read because she allows her sure voice to be riddled by uncertainty and her all-too-real heroine to be caught in her own inadequacies. A lovely read. And a lovely tome on friendship and adventure --- all too needed in a world of isolation and sheltering in place.


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I already know this will be a favorite for 2021 for me. When a book has me laughing out loud, crying the next, & swooning until my heart soars, how can it not be? My emotions are all over the place since I just finished reading this. Know that you need this book the day it publishes. Pre-order it ASAP.

A friends to lovers romance that literally takes you on a journey over the span of a decade, tells the story of what it means to find home & happiness among the people you love. It’s beautifully written, by the talented Emily Henry that has such a talented way of story-telling. Her words run over the page like smooth honey, lingering just long enough to burrow deep inside. She has such a brilliant way of weaving a romance that tugs & bends, in ways that shouldn’t work, but completely do. This one right here is perfection.