Rating: 4 Stars
People We Meet On Vacation is a lively rom-com from author Emily Henry. The familiar troupe of opposites attract drives this heartfelt story of two people who just can’t seem to get it right. So glad I made this my Book of the Month pick.
Poppy and Alex meet during freshman orientation and there is no connection. Poppy is everything Alex is not, loud, fun loving and a total extrovert with a passion for travel. Then she hitches a ride home with him and everything changes. They become best friends and stay in contact despite Alex still living in the same small town in Ohio and Poppy living in NYC. Every year they take a vacation together and it is always a grand adventure, until it isn’t.
They screwed up the friendship and have not spoken for two years. Now Poppy wants to give it a try again. She reaches out to Alex and to her surprise he answers. She convinces him to take another vacation with her. This time she wants to not only patch up their friendship but finally tell Alex how she really feels about him. Will it work, so much could go wrong.
The opposites attract troupe worked so well in the story because the characters were perfect. Yes they are opposites and yet they complement each other so well. They just go together like PB&J and the author did a fabulous job of showing this to the reader. The character development was perfect.
Though the story is character driven, there is plenty of tension to make the reader want to keep turning the pages. In fact, there were some places that the tension was almost unbearable. Sometimes I felt like shouting at the characters in order to get them to speak honestly and from the heart. It would have saved them so much heartache if they had.
The plot was all about this slow buildup of tension. Of course, there was the sexual tension between Poppy and Alex. However, that tension is overshadowed by the buildup to the crest when the reader finally finds out what caused the rife in their relationship. I kept wondering if they slept together on that last trip and something awkward happened that they could not reconcile the event. So many possibilities went through my mind as I read and I had to know what happened.
This is the rom-com you have been waiting for if you liked When Harry Met Sally. It has all the elements of wonderfully slow burn of a story. This is most definitely one of those books that you want to rush through to see what happens and yet dread to finish because you are not ready to say goodbye to the characters. Highly recommend.