Reading Journal: People we meet on Vacation

by Emily Henry

About this book

Alex and Poppy are best friends who are nothing alike. Poppy is fun-loving and has a wanderlust, whereas Alex has a control streak and is quiet and serious. They even live in different cities. But every summer they take a trip together. Until 2 years ago when they ruined everything and haven’t spoken since.

When Poppy is stuck in a rut at work and her friend asked her to think about when she was truly happy last, she knew it was that last trip with Alex. She manages to convince Alex to take another trip together and she tries to use this trip to salvage their friendship and make everything all right again.

Book review

While we know something big must have happened 2 years ago that made Poppy and Alex stop talking to each other, the reader is kept in suspense about what actually happened, until almost the end of the book.

The story focuses on this summer’s trip as the primary event, but the chapters are interspersed with Poppy’s and Alex’s trips from previous summers, including the first time they met. Initially I felt disoriented with the present – past – present – past sequencing of the chapters, but got used to it after a while. From these mini stories from the past trips, the reader is taken on Poppy’s and Alex’s wild adventures, and can see how the relationship between Poppy and Alex develops and how the characters slowly fall in love with each other, although neither admits it.

The story was good and I liked both characters, although I didn’t really understand Poppy’s reluctance about returning home. It was actually due to some humiliation she suffered as a teenager, which was (too) easily dispersed after she met her nemesis again later in the present. So it felt like a very big obstacle for most of the story but resolved so quickly that made one wonder why it was an obstacle in the first place.