People We Meet on Vacation

NOW A NETFLIX FILM! • From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Funny Story comes a sparkling novel that will leave you with the warm, hazy afterglow usually reserved for the best vacations.

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?

Emily Henry is the #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Happy Place, Book Lovers, People We Meet on Vacation, and Beach Read. She studied creative writing at Hope College, and now spends most of her time in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the part of Kentucky just beneath it. Find her on Instagram @EmilyHenryWrites.

“Henry has become synonymous with modern and heartfelt takes on the romance genre.”—Rolling Stone

“What Henry is especially skilled at is writing dialogue. The banter between Poppy and Alex is so natural, quick and witty that it would make Shonda Rhimes do a slow clap.”—The Associated Press

“Beach Read fans, assemble. Emily Henry is back with another smart, steamy romance….Warning: you will feel all the feels. And probably shed a few tears.”—The Skimm

“The strength of People We Meet on Vacation [is] the clever observations, the dialogue (which is laugh-out-loud funny) and, most particularly, the characters. Funny and fumbling and lovable, they’re most decidedly worth the trip."—The Wall Street Journal

“A delightful love story full of hilarious one-liners and winking asides, making it the perfect poolside companion.”—Real Simple

“Emily Henry is my newest automatic-buy author, and People We Meet on Vacation is the perfect getaway: a heartfelt, funny, tender escape that you wish could last forever.”—Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Two Ways

“People We Meet on Vacation is a gorgeous slow-burn romance, full of sexual tension and tantalizing possibility. I fell head over heels for Alex and Poppy, and loved travelling all over the world with them both.”—Beth O'Leary, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Flatshare

“This is a perfect rom com, and I completely adored it. I think Emily Henry might be our generation's answer to Nora Ephron. A witty, warm page turner.”—Sophie Cousens, New York Times bestselling author of GMA book club pick This Time Next Year

“Emily Henry is a STAR! Deeply emotional and starkly funny, People We Meet on Vacation cements Emily Henry as the Queen of Banter. Rom-com fans will swoon over this slow burn friends-to-lovers romance. Poppy and Alex are real and flawed and ultra-lovable, and their Summer Trips will scratch an itch for those of us who’ve missed traveling. A perfect summer read!”—Alexis Daria, bestselling author of You Had Me at Hola

“A compulsively readable book full of sparkling wit, dazzling prose and a romance that grabbed me by the heart and wouldn't let me go.”—Abby Jimenez, USA Today bestselling author of Life’s Too Short

“An absolute delight: swoony, legitimately moving, and packed with witty banter that makes Alex and Poppy jump off the page. We are already waiting impatiently for whatever Emily writes next.”—Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, USA Today bestselling authors of The Royal We and The Heir Affair

“Henry’s biggest strength is in the sparkling, often laugh-out-loud-funny dialogue, particularly the banter-filled conversations between Poppy and Alex. 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.”—Kirkus Reviews

Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation is a heartfelt, witty, and deeply emotional contemporary romance that perfectly captures the beloved "friends-to-lovers" and "opposites attract" tropes. The novel centers around two best friends, Poppy Wright and Alex Nilsen, who could not be more fundamentally different from one another. Poppy is a vibrant, spontaneous, and endlessly restless soul who thrives on adventure, wearing brightly colored clothes and chasing the next big thrill. Alex, on the other hand, is quiet, methodical, and deeply rooted in routine; he is an introverted high school literature teacher who prefers wearing khakis, reading a good book indoors, and staying close to his family in their small Ohio hometown. Despite these glaring differences, they share an incredibly profound, decade-long friendship that serves as the emotional anchor of both their lives.

Their unlikely bond began with a disastrous shared carpool home from the University of Chicago during their freshman year. While they initially clashed, a quiet understanding blossomed between them, leading to a sacred tradition: every summer for ten years, they took a week-long vacation together. These trips, funded initially on shoestring budgets and later by Poppy’s successful career as a travel journalist, were the highlight of their respective years. However, the narrative is built around a painful, glaring fracture in this tradition. As the book opens in the present day, the reader learns that Poppy and Alex have not spoken in two years. A mysterious, unspoken falling out occurred during their trip to Croatia, abruptly severing their deep connection and leaving a massive void in both of their lives.

In the present, Poppy has ostensibly achieved everything she ever wanted. She lives in New York City and works her absolute dream job at a high-profile travel magazine, getting paid to explore the world. Yet, she is entirely miserable, stuck in a deep rut of millennial burnout and profound loneliness. During a conversation with a friend, Poppy is asked to pinpoint the last time she was truly happy. The answer is immediate and undeniable: the last time she was truly happy was on that fateful trip to Croatia with Alex. Realizing that her dream life means nothing without her best friend to share it with, Poppy takes a massive leap of faith. She reaches out to Alex, breaking their two-year silence, and nervously convinces him to take one more summer vacation with her, this time to Palm Springs, under the guise of celebrating his brother's upcoming wedding.

Henry brilliantly structures the novel by alternating between the present-day Palm Springs trip and flashbacks to their past summer vacations. The flashbacks slowly peel back the layers of their friendship, revealing how their platonic bond naturally evolved into a deep, unspoken romantic love that both were too terrified to act upon. Meanwhile, the present-day trip to Palm Springs is a hilarious, chaotic disaster. Their budget-friendly hotel is sweltering, the air conditioning is broken, and a string of comical misfortunes forces them into incredibly close quarters. This forced proximity strips away their polite defenses and brings the simmering, unresolved tension from Croatia right to the surface. It becomes increasingly clear that their two-year silence was not born out of hatred, but out of the sheer, terrifying vulnerability of confronting their mutual romantic feelings.

As the heat in Palm Springs rises, so do the emotional stakes. They finally address the elephant in the room: what actually happened in Croatia. The rift, as it turns out, was the result of a blurred line, a shared intimate moment, and the subsequent panic that pursuing a romantic relationship would destroy the only permanent, unconditional bond they had. Both characters are forced to face their deepest insecurities. Poppy fears that her chaotic nature will eventually exhaust Alex, while Alex fears he can never give Poppy the adventurous, globe-trotting life she craves. Ultimately, the novel is a beautiful exploration of belonging and the realization that "home" does not necessarily have to be a physical place; sometimes, home is a person. After navigating their fears, they finally understand that the risk of losing each other in romance is worth the reward.

They decide to blend their vastly different lives, proving that love requires compromise, communication, and a willingness to grow together. It is a warm, deeply satisfying story about finding your person and having the courage to hold onto them. Since you are a fan of using Google Books and Kindle to discover new reads and build your digital library, People We Meet on Vacation is an excellent candidate for your next download. Its breezy, engaging chapters and dual timelines make it incredibly easy to fly through on a screen, and you can easily grab a free digital ebook sample to see if Poppy and Alex's banter hooks you right from the first page!