People We Meet on Vacation

okay first off, did i hate this book? no. but did i find really any sort of entertainment in this book? also no.

mostly my problems lie in the characters in this book since there is not a lot of plot going on. the plot mainly consists of flashbacks that we get of the two “best friends”, poppy and alex, of all their vacations for the past 10 years interspersed with the current vacation they are on. they had a falling out before this current vacation which put them on pause, and we get a big lead-up to what caused it.

so basically most of this book was hella boring and nothing happened. i have a problem with a lot of romance books today because i feel like they want to be fun and light but also have a little bit of depth too but it just ends of disjointed. if you want to be emotional. GO THERE. if you want to be funny. GO THERE. you can definitely achieve both of those in the same book too but unfortunately, i think ms. henry half assed both aspects instead of putting her emdussy into both.

the big falling out was basically pointless to me personally and this is coming from a very sensitive person who also is petty. while there was some legitimate reasons behind the falling out that i do understand but for grown adults it seemed a bit immature to not talk for that long. this is something i could look past a bit because ya know things get awkward but i think these 2 could use some good communication advice in therapy. as a 19 year old i feel like i have more self aware about communication than both of them combined tbh.

now moving onto my real problems.

poppy is the most pick me, wannabe quirky, white girl i've EVER seen.

alex has the personality of a saltine cracker.

so poppy literally is giving an insecure woman who wants to be different so bad that it simply becomes annoying. to me a lot of her personality and traits resembled that of a 15 year old trying to find themself while experiencing puberty. i'm not saying you don't have identity crises and still aren't finding yourself later in life but it feels as if she's stuck in that stage. again even though i'm 19, i feel like freshman year of high school me related to poppy more than i do currently. and when i tell you i was the most annoying creature to touch this earth then, that says a lot about poppy.

next up, alex. this man literally was unseasoned chicken breast rinsed off after cooking. he had no personality besides being uptight and ya know what i feel like he actually is a realistic late 20s/early 30s white man but i personally do not find that desirable. i need a little spice. a lil zest. and he was giving dry wonder bread. i actually don't blame alex much for this because i think he does have a lil somethin somethin buried in there but this whole book was told from poppy's perspective so we never see anything at all.

i didn't hate these characters together or anything of the sort. i didn't feel like they had no chemistry whatsoever either. i did think that since we didn't have alex's perspective, it was hard for me to truly see how he cared about poppy in a romantic sense.

the writing wasn't bad either but it was unmemoriable. i literally forgot that i read this book and had to put a rating/review.

this is just the most boring romance with some of the blandest millennial characters that i've ever read. i can see it being relatable for some but as a gen z, mixed, black, bisexual, woman this was not giving what it was suppose to. it lacked spice and that's that.

thank you to berkley publishing, emily henry, and netgalley for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review