People We Meet on Vacation
Emily Henry, 2021
Two best friends who vacation together every summer have one last trip to fix what went wrong between them—and decide what they are. Witty, tender and tinged with longing, it moves between easy banter and the ache of two friends who keep missing each other.
Feels like tenderness, wonder and longing. About friendship, love and memory.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy contemporary romance built on long friendship, summer trips and the slow work of repairing a bond. If you want the romance to start with clear mutual intent, the years of friendship and unresolved history may feel like a lot of groundwork.
Why read it
It gives you warm, witty companionship and an honest look at how friendship and attraction tangle over years, and why a last trip can push people to speak plainly.
A page from the book
The oldest child who learned to keep everything buttoned up.
Alex Nilsen is a study in control. In that tall, broad, permanently slouched and/or pretzel-folded body of his, there’s a surplus of stoicism (the result of being the oldest child of a widower with the most vocal anxiety of anyone I’ve ever met) and a stockpile of repression (the result of a strict religious upbringing in direct opposition to most of his passions; namely, academia), alongside the most truly strange, secretly silly, and intensely softhearted goofball I’ve had the pleasure to know. Emily Henry.Emily Henry is from Cincinnati; this novel’s beach scenes are set on Florida’s Sanibel Island, a real barrier island known for shelling.
Books that feel like this
More by Emily Henry
Beach Read
Emily Henry, 2020
A romance novelist who has stopped believing in love inherits a lakeside cottage, a literary rival next door, and one summer to write a book she doesn't want to.
Funny Story
Emily Henry, 2024
When her fiancé leaves her for his childhood best friend, a librarian moves in with the other person left behind and tries to rebuild.
Happy Place
Emily Henry, 2023
Three college friends, one Maine cottage, and a narrator carrying a secret through the happiest week of the year.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is People We Meet on Vacation for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy contemporary romance built on long friendship, summer trips and the slow work of repairing a bond. If you want the romance to start with clear mutual intent, the years of friendship and unresolved history may feel like a lot of groundwork.
- What is People We Meet on Vacation like?
- Witty, tender and tinged with longing, it moves between easy banter and the ache of two friends who keep missing each other. Feels like tenderness, wonder and longing. About friendship, love and memory.
- What should I read after People We Meet on Vacation?
- If you liked People We Meet on Vacation, try Say You'll Remember Me (Abby Jimenez), Better Than the Movies (Lynn Painter) and We'll Always Have Summer (Jenny Han).
A taste of the feed
The friend who names what you're about to throw away
None of this matters. None of it. It’s just stuff. You can build another clinic somewhere else, but that? What you have with her? That is not easy to find. The universe doesn’t just hand out true love. And I know that’s what this is because I see you’re willing to kill yourself over it. So if you have that, if you’re one of the lucky ones, why in God’s green earth would you give it up?
Say You'll Remember Me · Abby Jimenez
A mother, a sundress, a stolen base: the anatomy of a kept memory.
All the neighborhood kids played kickball in the street for hours that night, and the adults even joined us for a game. At one point, my mother was high-fiving Michael after stealing home base in her floral sundress and wedge sandals. That moment was pressed in my memories like a yellowed photograph in an antique album.
Better Than the Movies · Lynn Painter
The sensible reason she gave for choosing that college, and the truer one she kept to herself.
We were just together. It all happened so easily and so quickly that it felt like it had always been that way. One minute we were friends, then we were kissing, and then the next thing I knew, I was applying to the same college as him. I told myself and everyone else (including him, including my mother especially) that it was a good school, that it was only a few hours from home and it made sense to apply there, that I was keeping my options open. All of those things were true. But truest of all was that I just wanted to be near him. I wanted him for all seasons, not just summer.
We'll Always Have Summer · Jenny Han
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