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

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 taken 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, 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 all 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?

“I’m on vacation. Vacations always end. It’s the very fact that it’s finite that makes traveling special. You could move to any one of those destinations you loved in small doses, and it wouldn’t be the spellbinding, life-altering seven days you spend there as a guest, letting a place into your heart fully, letting it change you.”

We are so back! And by ‘we’, I mean the chick lit genre.

Rom-com novels have historically been very hit and miss for me. I used to blame this on getting older and losing some of my true romantic spirit as I become more senile and cynical. However, I have come to realise it’s not a me problem and rather that the space has become so oversaturated by cringeworthy alpha male romances and insta-love stories hitting the shelves rather than staying put on Wattpad.

Emily Henry has become the romance novel darling in recent months. My skepitcal brain has kept a safe distance, refusing to believe I could ever reach the dizzying heights of The Hating Game again. After all, it appears even Sally Thorne can’t even follow up her own masterpiece! I’ve had Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation – or rather You and Me on Vacation if we’re going by its UK title – sitting on my shelf for what feels like forever, ever so often cautiously eyeing it up. I finally decided to make the leap into the Emily Henry Universe and I now completely understand the hype.

It didn’t make me squee the way the The Hating Game did and I doubt anything ever will but People We Meet on Vacation is a masterclass in the friends to lovers trope. It’s a well rounded story that’s full of tense mutual pining, inside jokes and electric chemistry between the two main characters, Alex and Poppy.

Sure, there’s a lot of going around in circles and I would say the story is a bit too drawn out. There are moments where the will-they-won’t-they becomes tiresome and you just want to smash their heads together. I also wish there was a bit more drama after all the build up around the fateful Croatia trip but goddamn, the majority of this was just too cute and wholesome for me to care too much over its minor shortcomings.

To put it simply, it’s a well done romance read. It’s not overwhelmingly saccharin nor does it house one of those ridiculous beyond-the-realms-of-reality romantic plots. It’s just right. It didn’t entirely blow my socks off but that’s very tough for a romance book to achieve.

I had such a fun time vacationing with these characters and really bought into Henry’s vision of them as soulmates. Her writing is certainly evocative and easy to lose yourself in. You feel as though you’re right there alongside Poppy and Alex, suffering in the sweltering Palm Springs heat. Every emotion, every feeling within the novel is raw and real, sometimes it was like taking a punch to the gut.

I laughed, I cried, I yearned – and really, that’s all I can ask for from a romantic novel.

RATING

★★★★