Is the best part of travel the people you meet on vacation? Getting to try on different versions of yourself? Or deepening your relationship with your best friend?
I loved the two Emily Henry books I had already read, so when I saw this book was being turned into a movie, I scrambled to get the audiobook from my library before the movie came out (made it just in time!)
This book takes place in two timelines. Poppy is feeling unmotivated at her job as a travel writer for R&R magazine. She also hasn’t talked to her best friend, Alex, in two years, but Henry waits most of the book to tell us why that is.
She’s desperate to reconnect with him, but the only way she knows how is to go on vacation with him because that’s the only time they’ve ever spent together: on vacation.
They grew up a few miles from each other in neighboring small towns in Ohio. Poppy couldn’t wait to get out of there and see the world, but Alex enjoys the benefits of living in a small town.
They didn’t meet until college, but when Alex agrees to be Poppy’s traveling companion, they start small, traveling to various places in America on the cheap before Poppy gets a job at a travel magazine that pays all her travel expenses for her.
The book flips back and forth in time between the present vacation and the past trips Poppy and Alex have taken together, starting with their first trip and working up to the present vacation.
In the present timeline, Poppy and Alex are going to Alex’s brother’s wedding in Palm Springs. But her editor won’t approve a trip to Palm Springs because their demographic doesn’t care about it. So Poppy takes vacation time to go on her own dime, but she doesn’t tell Alex that the magazine won’t pay for it. Instead she tells him she wants to do it on the cheap because she’s nostalgic for the first trips they took together when they were both cash strapped.
She lies because she’s afraid he won’t agree to the trip if she tells him the truth, but as you can imagine, the lie quickly grows into an unmanageable monster.
Everything that can go wrong on the trip goes wrong. The AC in the Airbnb she rented doesn’t work, so it’s always sweltering in the apartment. Alex throws his back out and is bedridden for the day, but insists Poppy go see the sights without him, even though her whole goal for the vacation is to spend quality time with him and rekindle their friendship. Also, there are no sights worth seeing in Palm Springs.
And, of course, the one thing she thinks she can take Alex to that he’ll actually like is closed by the time they get there, so they don’t even get to see it.
Throughout the series of past vacations the two have taken together, we see how they grew closer, even as they dated other people. At one point, Poppy has a pregnancy scare and the only person she tells about it is Alex.
Finally, we find out the reason they haven’t spoken for two years is because they made out the last time they went on vacation together and neither knows how to deal with it. Each wants to give the other time, but since each is waiting for the other to make the first move, no move gets made until neither knows what to do. Finally Poppy breaks down and invites Alex on this trip.
Of course they end up hooking up in Palm Springs and admitting to each other that they’ve been madly in love for years, but were afraid of ruining the friendship.
But there’s still the matter of Poppy living in NYC and not wanting to live in a small town and Alex living in a small town, and they’re not sure how to rectify that.
Of course, they figure out how to rectify it, but first there’s therapy and personal realizations, followed by a Grand Gesture.
This book has everything I love about Emily Henry’s books, and the movie was fun, but felt a little rushed, despite being almost two hours long.
I think it’s because Henry’s books tend to be on the long side, especially for the romance genre, so fitting it all in to two hours is a challenge. Someone said it would have worked better as an 8-part miniseries, and I agree. Henry doesn’t shy away from taking the time to build this friendship between the main characters, and the movie shouldn’t either.