People We Meet on Vacation

My journey into the romance genre is still in its infancy, but this book has already set a bar for what I'd look for in a romance. The main characters, Alex and Poppy, feel fully realized, both inside and outside of the friendship. They both are able to stand on their own and bring a unique perspective to their friendship (and possible relationship). What also makes the book special is how you see glimpses of their journey from their early days in college to now having to face the “adult world” and contemplate life, love, and their purposes.

The technique of using their numerous vacations as building blocks to inform their characters, as well the environments and their current states of life, was a welcome decision that could have been easily overused if not crafted carefully. The chapters are structured in a way that you begin to see the full portrait of two friends holding their feelings back from the other, but also processing the world in their own way. The surrounding casts that also populate these flashbacks help bring the story from an initial idea to a fleshed out framework that brings such an idea together.

I appreciate the conversations outside of the romance aspect. You don't primarily see two characters go back and forth in a will-they-won't-they scenario. Instead, you follow these two people with deep, sometimes buried, feelings and experiences that explain why they are doing the things they do. Even though the story is mainly told from one point of view, I didn't feel like I missed out on not seeing a POV from the other character. I would've loved a second POV, because I enjoyed both characters, but the story is written in a way where you understand them completely, and may be able to empathize with them.

I do not have many criticisms for the story. At one point, I did wish the conflict for the third act was hinted at earlier, or at least approached earlier. The initial setup happens within the first one hundred pages or so, but we don't really see it come up again until there's about less than eighty pages left. The early aftermath of the conflict did feel a little forced to add some tension between our main two, but when thinking about it, it does make sense how it happened and why it happened when it did. And the last few chapters ultimately made it work, in my opinion. By the end, I was a sappy mess, wanting the best for these two people, wanting them to continue therapy and desiring more for themselves. And in a way, it helped me process my own feelings and thoughts. Let's just say I may have related to our protagonists a little too much.

In the end, I enjoyed this as a romance book, but it also reads as a book about people (especially millennials) looking for themselves and deciding what they want their futures to look like. It's about the growing pains of becoming an adult, holding on to your past or wanting to escape it, and being honest with yourself and your heart. And as our main character puts it, it's about finding your home, not necessarily in a place, but in a person.