It’s summertime, and summertime calls for Emily Henry books. It’s a rule. People We Meet on Vacation was my first EH read, and I basically inhaled it in a matter of two days. In honor of Henry’s Book Lovers coming out last month, I wanted to write a book review of my first read of hers.

If there were three words that could describe People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry, they would be: quirky, quirky, and quirky. Narrator Poppy Wright is a travel writer for Rest + Relaxation, a magazine that allows her to travel to far and wide places on the company’s dime. Even before she gained travel-writing and Instagram fame, Poppy and her college acquaintance-turned-best friend named Alex Nilsen made a tradition of taking yearly summer trips that the both of them would wait all year for. Even though they are complete opposites physically—Alex: tall and athletic, and Poppy: petite and couldn’t care less about exercise—her outgoing and oftentimes dominating personality complements his loyalty and dry sense of humor. This book may fall under the genre of romance, but if you are looking for a book that contains friendship, a deeper meaning that just might make you cry and cause you to look inward, and a narrator with a sense of humor that will make you outright laugh to the point of shushing yourself in public spaces, People We Meet on Vacation is right up your alley.

The book travels (pun intended) back and forth between the summers throughout Alex and Poppy’s interwoven lives from Vancouver Island, New Orleans, a last-minute trip to Nashville, and even a couple’s trip to Tuscany with their respective partners at the time. People We Meet on Vacation paints a timeline for the reader by centering each chapter on a specific summer in the past or present day. This organization of the main characters’ lives ultimately serves as a clear countdown for the reader to follow and finally find out what happened between Alex and Poppy “two summers ago,” a chapter in which a vacation trip changed everything for the two travel companions.

The narration stays in the hands of Poppy Wright, but no need to fear, reader. People We Meet on Vacation promises pages upon pages of romance, quirkiness (so much so that it’s said four times now within a few hundred words), and the classic “falling for your best friend” trope that the author writes in such a way that it somehow doesn’t feel overworked. You will grow with Poppy and Alex through these thirteen summers of the book as they find themselves as friends, to more than friends, to friends again, and all the stops in between.

Henry’s other works include the New York Times bestseller, Beach Read, as well as A Million Junes, The Love That Split the World, Hello Girls, and When the Sky Fell on Splendor. Check out Henry’s latest novel, Book Lovers! It’ll make you say: “Charlie Lastra is my soulmate.”

Reagan Fleming