⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ You and Me On Vacation by Emily Henry

Title: You and Me On Vacation (published as People We Meet On Vacation in the USA)
Author: Emily Henry
Published: July, 2021
Publisher: Penguin
Readership: Adult
Genre: Romance
Rating: ★★★★★

I received a copy of You and Me On Vacation from Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I’m happy to say that I am an Emily Henry fan. Beach Read is a book that’s stayed with me ever since I first read it last year. I loved the blend of romance and general fiction, and I was really excited to her see what she did with her second book.

It didn’t disappoint.

You and Me On Vacation is the story of Poppy and Alex and the twelve year slow-burn romance that defines their relationship. They first meet when they start college, convinced that they’ll never see each other again, and then every Summer their lives intersect and eventually become a series of Summer vacations and opportunities to explore the world together until one vacation it all goes wrong. At the beginning of the book, they’re not longer speaking and Poppy is in a creative and professional rut. Missing her best friend, she contacts him on a whim, proposing a last Summer vacation together.

Admittedly, slow-burn romances are not always my thing (which is not to say I don’t enjoy them, but I am pretty picky about the ones I enjoy), but this book really captured my attention from start to finish. Poppy and Alex are messy millennials who need to work on their communication, but have a long history together and path forward into the future together as well. Emily Henry is so clever at writing these smart, but flawed, characters who have to work at what they want without making it uncomfortable to read about. They’re relatable and honest and real.

The story is told in a series of present day moments interspersed with flashbacks to Poppy and Alex’s past, all of which are woven together to tell the story of their past and present. It’s a romance, so there’s an HEA and it’s a well-earnt HEA by the time we get there. I was on their side from start to end and just wanted them to realise their feelings for one another and reconcile their long, complicated past.

I’m not much of a traveller, but the descriptions of the places they travelled and their adventures together was just wonderful (and kind of escapist, in the current world climate) and I know this is going to be a popular summer read.