People We Meet On Vacation

Overall Rating:

Would I Recommend It?

Let’s just say I wouldn’t discourage someone wanting to read it, but also wouldn’t serve it up as a recommendation under the romantic-comedy genre.

Thoughts?

I’m like a teeter-totter of emotions about how much I liked or didn’t like reading this book.

I loved many traits of each of the characters as they were incredibly relatable either to David or myself. We are neither character. We are both a mix of both of the characters. But some things were so spot on. And some of the storyline and happenings are so much like our life story. These traits and moments definitely made me laugh out loud or get all cute and cozy in my thoughts and reminisce and think back on how it was for David and me. (I have tons of pages of the first half of this book at home marked up with sticky notes of funny quotes and scenarios.)

My friend read this book and had given it 3 stars and the question I remember her asking me is, “why would someone go on vacation with another person if that person is with someone?” Well, dear friend, the answer to that is because the heart wants what the brain doesn’t yet know. You feel the tug of your heart wanting to be with the person that you stupidly rejected when you were in your 20s. You keep conversations going through e-mails, social media, and Messenger throughout the years (15 to be exact) and you continue to build on that bond without truly realizing that that is exactly what you are doing. All the meanwhile one of you (ughm, me) is in a very committed relationship (married). Over the years once a year said far away friend comes home each Christmas and sometimes you meet up with other friends there and other years just the two of you. And then you’re left reeling with emotions you didn’t know you had for your friend. The type of emotions that are more than just friendship emotions. But you don’t know what to do because you have this wonderful and awesome life already with someone else. But there’s an itch you can’t scratch and you know some part of you is not doing the things it wants to be doing. Then one year you go on vacation with your friend and go on these incredibly epic hikes and that, that’s when you know you’re in deep sh*t and now must make a decision. (And eventually, finally, you do, you get divorced, you get with your friend, you marry your friend, and you have an even more amazing life than before.) So, yeah, I get how these two numbnut characters would stick to going on vacations each and every year. What I don’t fully get is the whole “I love you” comments and overly dangerous flirting and still not willing to give their relationship a chance for fear of losing each other. Just do it, people! Quit being so danged afraid of losing a good thing. But then again, I had to practically beg David to quit being stupid and give us a chance. So, maybe the characters are spot on, I’m just not the character who is afraid to give up everything to start on something else that I know has the potential to be amazing (or a massive train wreck–but luckily it ended up the former.)

So, why didn’t I love the book? Alex’s character worked for me. Hers, however, did not. Throughout the book my like of her didn’t grow. I didn’t feel her gradually growing on me like the author had wanted me to. Based on reading author’s afterward that her characters were in some sense a semblance of the characters in When Harry Met Sally. I didn’t go from a dislike to love relationship with her. It’s possible that the influencer themed character grated on my nerves. I weirdly am starting to see a pattern where I dislike books with characters that live on social media. Which is incredibly weird, because I enjoy things like writing these reviews, posting stories of my hiking adventures, reviewing food, most recent hobby of creating Insta Reels, etc. So, don’t know why, but I tend to begin cringing when authors create characters who make a living on social media venues. At least in this book she didn’t go over the top like the character in Big Summer (a  book I never finished reading).

I also read part of this book while vacationing and there was a lot of stop and go reading times which could’ve attributed to the storyline becoming too choppy for me and I may have lost interest in the characters. Like the ending where it goes into far too much description about characters in a wedding and then back to stories about the parents. I was pretty much screaming in my head, “get to the point!”

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