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Wait time: About 2 weeks
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
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?
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
May 11, 2021 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
- ISBN: 9781984806765
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781984806765
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781984806765
- File size: 2389 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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December 1, 2020
In the New York Times best-selling Henry's People We Meet on Vacation, vivacious travel writer Poppy once vacationed yearly with straight-and-narrow best friend Alex, but their last vacation left their relationship in shreds, and Poppy must talk him into one last trip so they can right the balance. In Jenoff's The Woman with the Blue Star, 18-year-old Sadie Gault is hiding in the sewers after the liquidation of the Krak�w ghetto when she forms a tentative friendship with wealthy Polish girl Ella Stepanek (500,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). In Just Last Night, the latest from the internationally best-selling McFarlane (If I Never Met You), Eve is still crushing on Ed, among their group of four forever best friends, but her questions about what might have been are interrupted by a catastrophe upending all their lives (50,000-copy first printing). Best-selling novelist/memoirist Maynard returns with Count the Ways, which tracks the fate of a family when the parents break up after an accident that permanently injures the youngest child (50,000-copy first printing). Oakley follows up You Were There Too, a LibraryReads pick whose film rights have been sold, with The Invisible Husband of Frick Island, featuring an ambitious young journalist disgruntled about having to cover a fundraiser on Chesapeake Bay's Frick Island until he discovers the townsfolk pretending to hear and see a man who's not there--all for the sake of his widow. Inspired by a real-life individual, Phillips's The Family Law stars a crusading young family lawyer in early 1980s Alabama whose efforts to help women escape abusive marriages brings death threats that eventually endanger a teenager she has befriended. In Shipman's latest, terminally ill Emily wants the lifelong friends she made at summer camp in 1985 to scatter her ashes at the camp, and The Clover Girls find another life-affirming request from her when they oblige (100,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). No plot details yet on Weiner's That Summer, but the setting is sunstruck Cape Cod, and there's a 350,000-copy first printing. Weir's Katharine Parr, The Sixth Wife, tells the story of twice-widowed Katharine, cornered into marriage with Henry VIII and shamelessly used by an old lover after Henry's death.
Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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April 1, 2021
Short, loud Poppy and quiet, tall Alex were best friends who took a vacation together each summer for a decade, until their trip two years ago changed everything and tore them apart. Now Poppy lives in New York and works as a travel writer, but she has been feeling unsatisfied. She reaches out to Alex, currently a teacher in their Ohio hometown, and they make plans to travel once again. Poppy hopes that this trip will repair their friendship, but from the onset, they encounter one issue after another. Told through Poppy's perspective, the story shifts in time between the present and past summer trips. Henry, best-selling author of Beach Read (2020), excels at creating chemistry and charm, and readers will eagerly anticipate these characters finally admitting their feelings for each other. Their slow-burn romance builds as the flashbacks reveal their journey as unlikely friends through different schools, jobs, cities, and relationships with other people. The pacing sometimes falters, but the emotions always ring true. While Henry's romance may inspire some wanderlust, it's the people more than the places that truly dazzle.COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Starred review from April 1, 2021
Travel writer Poppy Wright finds that her inspiration is fading. It doesn't help that she hasn't spoken to her best friend for over two years. Hoping to reclaim both her friendship with Alex Nilsen and her zest for her career, Poppy schedules a vacation on the cheap, just like she and Alex used to during their college days. As challenges arise--including a busted-up rental car, a misleading condo rental that only has one bed, and a broken air conditioner--Poppy and Alex confront the event that tore them apart, which could create a new bond between them or end their friendship forever. A series of flashbacks show 12 years of summer vacations. Buttoned-up, starchy Alex and chaotic, sunny Poppy are perfect foils who are also a perfect match; they just need to let go of their fear and try. VERDICT Henry's latest will appeal to readers who are drawn to stories with emotion, poetic language, and a strong sense of place, like Kate Clayborn's Love Lettering.--Elizabeth Gabriel, Milwaukee P.L.
Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from March 15, 2021
A travel writer has one last shot at reconnecting with the best friend she just might be in love with. Poppy and Alex couldn't be more different. She loves wearing bright colors while he prefers khakis and a T-shirt. She likes just about everything while he's a bit more discerning. And yet, their opposites-attract friendship works because they love each other...in a totally platonic way. Probably. Even though they have their own separate lives (Poppy lives in New York City and is a travel writer with a popular Instagram account; Alex is a high school teacher in their tiny Ohio hometown), they still manage to get together each summer for one fabulous vacation. They grow closer every year, but Poppy doesn't let herself linger on her feelings for Alex--she doesn't want to ruin their friendship or the way she can be fully herself with him. They continue to date other people, even bringing their serious partners on their summer vacations...but then, after a falling-out, they stop speaking. When Poppy finds herself facing a serious bout of ennui, unhappy with her glamorous job and the life she's been dreaming of forever, she thinks back to the last time she was truly happy: her last vacation with Alex. And so, though they haven't spoken in two years, she asks him to take another vacation with her. She's determined to bridge the gap that's formed between them and become best friends again, but to do that, she'll have to be honest with Alex--and herself--about her true feelings. In chapters that jump around in time, Henry shows readers the progression (and dissolution) of Poppy and Alex's friendship. Their slow-burn love story hits on beloved romance tropes (such as there unexpectedly being only one bed on the reconciliation trip Poppy plans) while still feeling entirely fresh. Henry's biggest strength is in the sparkling, often laugh-out-loud-funny dialogue, particularly the banter-filled conversations between Poppy and Alex. But there's depth to the story, too--Poppy's feeling of dissatisfaction with a life that should be making her happy as well as her unresolved feelings toward the difficult parts of her childhood make her a sympathetic and relatable character. The end result is a story that pays homage to classic romantic comedies while having a point of view all its own. A warm and winning When Harry Met Sally... update that hits all the perfect notes.COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation is an inspired and achingly romantic reimagining of Nora Ephron’s beloved rom-com When Harry Met Sally, which famously questioned whether men and women (heterosexual pairings specifically) can ever truly be just friends. And the answer, then and now, is . . . probably not if they act like these characters do. Like Ephron and Jane Austen before her, Emily Henry paints a specific and nuanced picture of first impressions gone perfectly wrong in a prelude to a relationship that is nonetheless incredibly right. When Alex meets Poppy during the first night of orientation at the University of Chicago, neither one is particularly impressed. He is wearing khakis; she wears what look to him like a ridiculous costume. Alex quickly sizes Poppy up, reacting to her “neon orange and pink floral jumpsuit from the early seventies” with skepticism and disapproval. They’re sure they have little in common apart from “the fact that we hate each other’s clothes.” But it takes just one more meeting—a shared ride home to their mutual hometown in Ohio over break—for an enduring mutual fascination, fueled by those same differences, to firmly take hold. The rest is the stuff of legend or infamy, depending on your vantage point. From the perspective of Alex’s long-term, long-suffering, on-again, off-again girlfriend, Sarah, Poppy's connection with Alex hangs over her own relationship with him like a constant threat—Chekov’s unresolved sexual tension. From the perspectives of Alex and Poppy, who are deeply committed to denying their palpable physical attraction to each other, the two are devoted best friends, almost like siblings: 95% platonic and just a tiny bit “what if.” But that pesky 5% is a killer. Poppy is continually surprised when it rears its head. Even worse, Poppy, from whose perspective the story is told, misguidedly but truly believes she’s alone in this torture. Alex is a buttoned up English major-turned-high school teacher and a surrogate father to his younger brothers. Poppy is a freewheeling former weirdo-turned-travel writer and internet personality who’s determined to make up the time she lost to bullies when she was young. Both are seemingly committed to the idea that someone like him could never want someone like her and vice versa. Partners come and go, but for over a decade Alex and Poppy keep in close touch and continue the ritual of an annual summer vacation. The first years are lean ones: She blogs about her travels; he goes to graduate school to get an MFA in creative writing and then a Ph.D. in literature. They save and scrimp and take on extra jobs to fund their budget adventures. Eventually Alex returns to Ohio to teach, and Poppy secures a dream job at a glamorous travel magazine called Rest and Relaxation (a thinly veiled version of aspirational publications like Travel + Leisure). After that, the vacation locales go upscale: a villa in Tuscany, high-end European hotels. Though the style of travel evolves, Alex and Poppy’s devotion—their heartfelt intrigue and obsession with each other and the unspoken attraction that pulls them together like magnets wherever they roam—never changes. In When Harry Met Sally, Harry claims this type of close, sustained platonic friendship can’t be done, at least not in the way Alex and Poppy are doing it: “What I'm saying is . . . that men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.” The gorgeously written, delightfully original People We Meet on Vacation will not do much to contest that claim. It’s a wonderful tribute that puts Henry firmly on the path to becoming the millennial Nora Ephron.
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