I also like the vivid way she explains how she feels: “like someone reached into my rib cage and held my heart inside. For example, Poppy seems to constantly notice the corners of people’s mouths, which is interesting, and specifying that a person’s “winged eyeliner could slice through an aluminum can” is fantastic. She knows how to paint a picture of people, places, and even the seemingly smallest situations and details. What works: Henry is a descriptive and clever writer.

I want to yearn to know what happens next – not flip pages with the assumption that I’m right. Predictability is not my favorite trait of any story. Fifty pages into the 361-page book (it is WAY too long – maybe 100 pages too long), I knew how the story was going to end. In fact, there are several sections of the book that don’t need to be there which is mostly due to redundancy and predictability. Conversely, the conversations between Poppy and Alex in People We Meet alternate between funny and extremely redundant. Also, the people in Nora’s life have a lot more depth which makes a huge difference because the banter between Nora, Charlie, and Libby in Book Lovers serves as a highlight. While both Nora Stephens and Poppy Wright are strong, smart female narrators, I found thirty-something book agent Nora much more relatable than (self-proclaimed) twenty-something millennial Poppy. Emily Henry is an excellent writer, and she definitely knows how to create clever dialogue, but People We Meet On Vacation was extremely disappointing after reading the fantastic Book Lovers.

I should have just read Book Lovers and left it at that.

People we meet on vacation cover