Book Review: People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry
People We Meet on Vacation
Author: Emily Henry
Published: May 11, 2021
373 Pages
Reviewed By: Kim
Kim’s Rating: 3 stars
Book Description:
Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.
Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.
Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.
Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.
Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?
Kim’s Review:
Brain candy, plain and simple. And unfortunately, it bordered on YA level maturity. A bunch of adults acting like teens and it did indeed get frustrating, per usual. Plus, who visits Sanibel Island and talks about book stores, without mentioning Gene’s Books by name?? I mean, come on; it’s a romcom book. There’s not much to say. It’s simple, it’s easy, it’s sorta feel good when you’re not annoyed with the characters’ stupidity. It entertained me, but I will never read it again. There it is.
Purchase Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK
AudioBook Review: Book Lovers by Emily Henry
Book Lovers
Author: Emily Henry
Narrator: Julia Whelan
Published: May 3, 2022
Audiobook
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Read: June 15-22, 2022
Jessica’s Rating: 2.5 stars
Book Description:
One summer. Two rivals. A plot twist they didn’t see coming….
Nora Stephens’ life is books—she’s read them all—and she is not that type of heroine. Not the plucky one, not the laidback dream girl, and especially not the sweetheart. In fact, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, for whom she lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby.
Which is why she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for the month of August when Libby begs her for a sisters’ trip away—with visions of a small-town transformation for Nora, who she’s convinced needs to become the heroine in her own story. But instead of picnics in meadows, or run-ins with a handsome country doctor or bulging-forearmed bartender, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor from back in the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they’ve met many times and it’s never been cute.
If Nora knows she’s not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again—in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow—what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves.
Jessica’s Review:
**UNPOPULAR OPINION ALERT**
Book Lovers seems to be a novel that everyone is loving this summer, except me. I did like the glimpse we see into the publishing world, and this novel is supposed to be a romance novel, but for me it was not. I did not see the likeability of the two main characters at all and did not see the chemistry between them. For me, their connection just seemed to be physical, and we do get some spicy scenes with Nora and Charlie.
I was invested in the sister relationship throughout the novel. They were all I cared about, did not care for the ‘romance’ at all. And being this is a romance novel, it failed for me. This is a first novel for me from Emily Henry and I just don’t know if I would read another after this one. Well… Maybe I would give her at least one more shot if a book description sounds like one I would want to read. But I won’t be on the lookout for another of Henry’s novels.
Overall, this one disappointed me. Julia Whelan was the narrator and honestly, her narration was what kept me listening.
Purchase Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK