People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

Well, this is a book I’ve seen so much love for around the book world and the audiobook finally became available from my hold shelf at the library. I went in blind and I was really surprised by this story, but surprised in a good way.

This is a story told from Poppy Wright’s perspective and it chronicles a friendship with Alex Nilson, a man she met when she went to college. They figure out they are from neighboring high schools and they don’t see each other for the semester then fate intervenes and a mutual friend makes arrangements for Alex and Poppy to carpool home together for school break. They bond over that drive home. They form a close friendship that’s fun and wacky and they are so close to each other and develop a fun, but deep relationship. The friendship they form is one we all crave; to have someone like that in your life is a real gift, but as their friendship evolves, they are both faced with the trauma of their pasts lives in the sense that it’s a bit crippling and it really does throw a wrench in their lives in the sense that they are both in the wrong places from these traumas and the inner searching they do and the therapy they enter helps them. They both make mistakes along the way but at the base of their relationship is a love that can’t really be ignored and a sense that they need to be with one another.

My take on this novel is that I loved it, I’m definitely not a millennial reader so I didn’t read this in that frame of mind but as a human who has a similar story to Poppy’s and I can empathize with her as a character.

This was a five star read for me and I’m glad I waited out receiving it from the library.