People We Meet on Vacation

Emily Henry is an American fiction writer living in Cincinnati, Ohio. In a May 10, 2021 interview with Henry on Shondaland.com, Katie Tamola writes, “Henry has made a name for herself in taking typical romance-novel tropes and adding modern twists.” Her latest novels Beach Read (2020) and People We Meet on Vacation (2021) were New York Times best sellers. Both novels are contemporary romances which are primarily set on vacation and feature the attraction of opposites: a serious, literary hero and a fun-loving heroine.

In the FAQ section of her website, Henry describes People We Meet on Vacation as an “homage” to screenwriter Nora Ephron’s 1989 movie When Harry Met Sally by following two best friends over the course of a decade and showing the progression of their relationship. In revisiting the format of this vintage romance with its portrayal of a desire developing over time, Henry presents an alternative to the modern thirst for instantaneous gratification. In her review of May 12, 2021 Washington Post writer, Angela Haupt considers that Henry “freshens […] up” Ephron’s story “with her signature wit, epic near misses and steamy longing that threatens to seep through the page, fogging the reader’s glasses.” Haupt also praises the “personal-growth dimension” of the story, which ensures that Alex and Poppy cannot fully enter a mature relationship until they have dealt with their personal issues. This represents a departure from Ephron’s movie, which prioritizes the changing dynamic between Harry and Sally over their individual growth.

In the Shondaland.com interview, Henry describes herself as a “pragmatic romantic.” While she takes inspiration from the tropes of classic romance, Henry wants her “characters to feel 100-percent real, and the scenarios they find themselves in are relatable rather than aspirational.” Readers have had a mixed response to the book: While Henry intended to write a deep narrative of personal growth, readers such as Haupt found the novel an escapist “‘beach read’ in that it doesn’t “demand too much of the reader” and is “unabashedly fun.”

Plot Summary

People We Meet on Vacation tells the story of how, over the course of 12 years, Poppy Wright and Alex Nilsen—who meet at the University of Chicago—go from being indifferent acquaintances, to best friends, to romantic partners.

The main action begins when Poppy, aged 30, has achieved her dream of becoming a prominent travel writer living in New York, yet has been unhappy since her two-year estrangement from her best friend Alex following a fateful incident on their Summer Trip to Croatia. The novel occupies a dual timeline, with one strand relating what happens to 30-year-old Poppy and Alex following Poppy’s realization and a subsequent trip to Palm Springs, and another examining the history of their past vacations.

The Summer Trip was an annual occurrence for Poppy and Alex ever since they struck up an unlikely friendship at the University of Chicago. While they are diametric opposites—Alex is a tall, serious honors student and Poppy is a short, adventurous college dropout—they find that they understand each other as no one else can. The past strand in the book begins with the summer furthest back in time and ends with the fateful trip to Croatia two summers prior. In the first few trips—which occur on a shoestring budget—Poppy and Alex are platonic friends, who get to know each other and confide things they have never told anyone else. For example, Alex tells Poppy about his childhood responsibilities as the eldest brother of four following the death of his mother when he was six and his father’s subsequent fragility. Poppy tells Alex the reason behind her aversion to their Ohio hometown, Linfield, is that she was bullied for her family’s eccentricity.

Although they live in different cities after college— Poppy moves to New York to pursue a career in travel-writing and Alex goes to Indiana to do a creative writing MFA—the Summer Trips persist. With each passing year, the duo realizes they are only not lonely in each other’s company and the sexual tension between them is growing. Poppy finds that their friendship is so precious that she does not want to risk spoiling it by having events take a romantic turn. She has a rotation of other boyfriends, all of whom satisfy her whim for travel and adventure, but do not really know her; meanwhile, Alex remains hung up on Sarah Torval—a woman who he believes is his ideal. Sarah is jealous of Poppy, who Alex insists on keeping as a permanent fixture in his life. Finally, during the Summer Trip to Croatia, two years before the current action, it is revealed that a drunken kiss between Poppy and Alex and the overwhelming feelings that accompanied it were behind their estrangement. Both were under the mistaken impression that the other regretted the kiss, and the feelings of rejection and hurt were so palpable that they preferred to not speak rather than confront their issues.

When two summers later—in the present—Poppy convinces Alex to come on vacation with her and the two go to Palm Springs for a few days before Alex’s brother David’s wedding, she determines nothing will happen to ruin their friendship. The two navigate extreme heat and sexual tension in their tiny apartment as Poppy desperately determines to think of fun day trips to resume the zone of their old friendship. However, the heat and off-season nature of Palm Springs go against Poppy’s plan, leading to a fiery confrontation where Alex tells Poppy it is impossible for them to go back to the way things were between them before; they have fundamentally changed.

After saying how much they want and love each other, Poppy and Alex end up in bed together. They spend a few blissful days in love and as the new couple at David’s wedding. However, on the day of their departure when they are separating and bewildered about what the future will hold, Poppy makes the mistake of admitting that she was unhappy in her life and took the trip because she needed a break from reality. Alex takes this in the worst possible way when he imagines Poppy used him to take a break from her life and he will always be a vacation fling for her. While Poppy tries to assure him that this is not the case, Alex suggests that they do not speak for a while.

Alone in New York, Poppy is miserable. She starts attending therapy which forces her to look at her chief issues—running away from the person she once was in Linfield and from other forms of intimacy and commitment. She realizes that while she loved Alex all those years, her fear of being rejected caused her to ensure that he was purely a vacation friend rather than her life partner.

Resolving on a course of profound change, Poppy heads to Linfield where Alex lives. While Alex initially seems set to break Poppy’s heart by declaring they are just too different to work as a couple, he eventually admits that his own issue is a fear of happiness following the loss of his mother. Poppy and Alex embrace both love and uncertainty when they embark on a life together, testing out life in New York and Linfield, respectively, before committing to a hometown.