Vacation, All I Ever Hunted: Friends Without Benefits

When I first read about Emily Henry's People We Meet on Vacation on Ivy's Closet, I knew it was my kind of novel.  Ivy's Closet, by the way, is a fun and creative blog featuring original fiction, book and movie reviews, music playlists, and more.  If you enjoy pop culture and engaging writing (and who doesn't?), then I highly recommend it, along with its sister blogs Ellie and Caitlin & Megan.  So, People We Meet on Vacation.  I was instantly into it because it's about the kind of romance that everyone wants: the kind that begins as friendship.  Alex and Poppy have enough inside jokes to fill a book, accept each other's flaws (an acceptance, that is, accompanied by good-natured ribbing), and are protective of each other.  After meeting at the University of Chicago, they go on a summer vacation every year.  Henry describes these trips as flashbacks, letting us get to know Alex and Poppy slowly and through the bittersweet lens of nostalgia.  And although their living situations, jobs, and romantic statuses change, they keep at it for a decade.

Poppy is a free spirit who showers three times a week and lives in vintage jumpsuits whereas Alex is a planner who runs at dawn and prefers brand-new button-downs.  Maybe that's why they stay in the friend zone.  Yet although much is made of their Odd Couple ways, they're at their most comfortable -- and happiest -- together.  Which tracks, because they have three key things in common: 1) They're both writers, 2) They both have a stellar sense of humor (so much more important than on-the-same-page hygiene), and 3) They both come from the same small town in Ohio.  Interestingly, it's the town of their origin stories that keeps them from becoming even closer.  Haunted by being taunted in high school, Poppy dropped out of college and fled to New York City, eager to begin her globe-trotting life as a travel writer.  But Alex put down roots, building a career as an English teacher-slash-short story writer to be near his dad, who's still grieving the death of his mom.  And that works.  Because Alex and Poppy have their summer vacations, or as Poppy puts it, their "world for two."  

But sooner or later, vacations must end, even for Alex and Poppy.  As they enter their thirties, they can no longer pretend that they don't have to decide what to do with their lives -- and each other.  Can they move on from the carefree, no-strings-attached vibe of the Go-Go's "Vacation" to the let's-be-each-other's-north-star romance of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros' "Home"?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But one thing's for sure.  Sometimes, the people we meet on vacation aren't strangers, but the best versions of ourselves.

Then again, sometimes they are strangers.  But that's a different kind of book for a different kind of blog. 

P.S. Don't talk to strangers.