The People We Meet on Vacation

Author: Emily Henry

One-sentence summary: Two former best friends who used to travel together find themselves thrown together on a trip again and they confront the things that tore them apart.

B.A.D. Girls Book Rating: 6

Our favorite thing about it: We thought it could make a good movie.

Our least favorite thing about it: It was stereotypical and predictable.

Main Topics of Discussion: Friendship, Travel, Communication, Goals

Our favorite quote: “Like a good book or an incredible outfit, being on vacation transports you into another version of yourself.”

Notes: We all expected to like this book more than we actually did. The main character was not likeable to most of us and that starts us off on a bad foot. Then, there were so many unrealistic elements to the story that it took us right out of it and made us not really care about the characters. We saw where the plot was going the whole time, which is not always a bad thing, but in this case it was. One of our main beefs was that the two main characters did have a realistic problem – they had very different life goals. But the author was trying to shoehorn their relationship to work despite that. And sometimes that works and sometimes it feels forced. Last thing – we thought the title was not a good representation of the book. Yes, there was travel involved, but the “meeting people” part is wildly misrepresented by the title. You get the idea that there will be many interesting people they meet…and that is not the case. We hear about one or two and they have nothing to do with the plot or the development of the characters. All of these negative things make it sound like we didn’t enjoy the book. We mostly did – we just had lots of things bother us about it! It was an easy, quick read that some may enjoy more than others.

Memorable Meeting Moments: We were at the lake house. We rented a boat again and had some…difficulty anchoring at Hell’s Gate (finally got it). It was fine. ;) We did some face masks together this year. 

What We Ate: The usual stuff – beef tacos, eggs, pizza, cookies. This year we added Thursday evening charcuterie instead of stopping for dinner on the way to the lake house.