There’s just something about a good trip to shake things up when your life’s feeling tiresome, stagnant, or stale. Like the best kind of books, a good trip transports you not only to a different setting but also to a different life. It enables you to see the world from a fresh perspective, and to entertain the boundless possibilities of what-if. But if there’s one thing better than a good trip, it might just be a bad trip. All the best stories come out of those ones, after all. Relationships are made or broken in those gridlocked hours on the freeway in the middle of the night, or those allout-sprints across airports with the luggage whose wheel broke five minutes after you bought it. Long-standing tensions pull tauter than ever and suppressed feelings simmer to the surface. By traveling with someone, you gain a rare kind of intimacy, built of layers of fresh insight into that person’s many facets and buoyed by a secret language of inside jokes. People We Meet on Vacation is about that. Not just one very bad trip, but how a decade’s worth of summer vacations brings two friends closer and closer together, until there’s nowhere left to go and they have to face the truth of their relationship. It’s about that sense of boundless possibility that comes from being in a new place, and about that bone-deep exhaustion and relief when you finally get home, with dozens of cherished memories. I wrote this book six months before I’d ever heard the word COVID, and in the months since the pandemic first struck, both vacation and home have come to take on entirely new meanings. But reading—that’s remained the best escape of all, an ever-present invitation to consider that what-if. So wherever you are, whatever you’re dealing with, I hope People We Meet on Vacation carries you away for a bit, that it takes you on a delightful trip and brings you home, feeling recharged, invigorated, and inspired to invite those new possibilities into your life.
How would you describe People We Meet on Vacation? It might be an obvious answer, but I really did set out to write a book that would feel like a vacation. To me, the best trips aren’t just exciting or relaxing, but also surprising and even funny—the kind you’ll laugh about for years. This is a book that’s meant to carry you away, fill you up with new memories, then plop you back at home, happy and satisfied. People We Meet on Vacation is like a love letter to travel, featuring ten summer trips taken by two best friends. What inspired this idea? Like with Beach Read, the title for People We Meet on Vacation arrived before the premise did. Originally, when I brainstormed out from that point, I had a very different concept, but it never felt quite right. While I was looking for the right setting, I thought about trips I’d taken over the years with friends, and eventually it hit me that while any of those destinations could make a great setting, what really makes a trip memorable is who you went with. I was excited to follow these two characters across time and see how their friendship changed and shifted depending on where they were, and writing the book became the ultimate vacation for me.
Author photo © Devyn Glista/St.Blanc.Studios.
Your first adult romance novel featured an enemies-to-lovers story between two completely different writers. People We Meet on Vacation is about two polar opposite best friends who end up falling in love. What makes you keep coming back to writing stories within these classic tropes? What do you find special about a love story between two unexpected characters? I don’t usually actively choose a trope, but I think there’s a reason tropes exist. I know people who fell in love at first sight. I know people who married their childhood best friends. I know people who hated their spouses the first time they met, couples who are complete opposites and couples who are basically the same person, and people who broke up once and reconnected years later. We call them tropes, but they come from real life, and for me, the characters’ personalities determine which trope they’ll fit into. That decides the relationship more than anything. When it comes down to it, though, I think I’m just always drawn to writing situations that lend themselves to a lot of tension—whether that’s a romance that starts out as rivalry, or a love story between two people who feel certain they have no business being in love. What parts of Alex and Poppy’s travels were inspired by your own experiences? Most of them! They weren’t all taken with the same person, but most of the trips are, to an extent, based on real vacations I took, and even some of the ways things went hilariously wrong. A lot of times, the worst trips make the best stories. I took an extremely terrifying water taxi ride (during which we saw otters holding hands!). A truly misguided gallery girl did once try to sell me a $21,000 bear sculpture. The very boring cemetery tour in New Orleans really happened, and the inn near Muir Woods is based on a real place. What’s your favorite travel location? What place is at the top of your wish list? I really do love to go to Northern California. I like that it’s sort of chilly on the water, and I love the vineyards and the redwoods. I haven’t traveled much outside of the United States, though, and I would love to see pretty much anywhere in Japan. I also really want to see the Swiss Alps!
“I do think reading is my best escape right now. It’s the only thing that really fully sweeps me away and dissolves the world around me.”
Obviously, we can’t do much travel right now, and People We Meet on Vacation really speaks to those of us with insatiable wanderlust. What are your tips for vacationing from home or dealing with having to stay indoors? Oh, gosh, I want someone to give me tips. I do think reading is my best escape right now. It’s the only thing that really fully sweeps me away and dissolves the world around me. I also love to make an event of things, so pairing a movie or show with a food and beverage that matches the story’s setting is fun. Aside from that, finding trails to hike near my home has been lifesaving. My husband I also pulled our mattress into our living room for a few days just for a change of scenery, and we had some of my family members in our very small quarantine bubble come stay with us for a few days, even though we live five minutes apart. We’ve also done some themed Zoom parties, just for the excuse to get dressed up, and I always lean pretty hard into the holidays anyway, but this year, November first was a hard right turn into garlands and Christmas lights. Both Poppy and Alex experience “growing pains” that affect them as adults— Poppy struggled with being accepted in school and Alex took on the role of caretaker for his family at a young age. Were any of their experiences inspired by your own life? A funny thing about growing up is learning how much your childhood still affects you. I wouldn’t say I had exactly the experience of either Poppy or Alex, but I think that, like both of them, I feel the echoes of my childhood throughout my life in surprising ways. Without any huge spoilers, one of my favorite moments in the book is when Poppy has the thought, We’re so old. And obviously she’s not. But the point is, she realizes that these things that happened so long ago still have an (arguably too strong) effect on her. So much time has passed, and I think a lot of your late twenties and early thirties is reckoning with the things you need to let go of, to become who you really want to be.
Without giving anything away, what was one of your favorite scenes to write? Was there a scene that was particularly challenging? Like I mentioned, there’s a scene where Poppy essentially accepts that she’s an adult, and I found writing that somewhat cathartic. But there were so many moments I loved writing between Poppy and Alex. I particularly love the mountain scene in Vail. Do you relate to Poppy or Alex more, and why? I think in almost every way, I relate to Poppy more, except that I definitely like control and routine in the way Alex does. Maybe it’s quarantine talking, but I cannot wait to put on my loudest piece of clothing and go to a crowded bar. People We Meet on Vacation is not just a love story, it’s also about finding the courage to be yourself and let go of the past. What do you hope readers will take away from a story about characters like Poppy and Alex? Recently, I had a conversation with some friends about how inadequate we feel all the time. All of us agreed that we find ourselves thinking everyone else has it much more together than we do. We find ourselves treating small mistakes as huge failures, and thinking that the rest of the world knows how to be a human, and we alone do not. So much of Poppy’s story is about dealing with those feelings of inferiority. The thing I want most for readers of People We Meet on Vacation is for them to let go of the idea that they themselves are somehow inadequate, just because their lives don’t look like someone else’s. I want them to feel like they get a nice, long vacation of a book, and when they get home, they arrive with a bit more clarity about what it is they really want, everyone else’s ideas of success set aside.
About Emily Emily Henry writes stories about love and family for both teens and adults. She studied creative writing at Hope College and the New York Center for Art & Media Studies, and now spends most of her time in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the part of Kentucky just beneath it. Find her on Instagram @EmilyHenryWrites.
“Everything Now”— Arcade Fire “9 to 5” — Dolly Parton “Beautiful” — Carole King “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart” — Mark Ronson “Dreams” — Fleetwood Mac “Hounds of Love” — Kate Bush “Only You” — Yaz “This Must Be the Place” — Talking Heads “I Wanna Dace with Somebody” — Whitney Houston “Pictures of You” — The Cure “Wise Up” — Aimee Man “Gentle On My Mind” — Glen Campbell “Les Fleurs” — Minnie Riperton “A Case of You” — Joni Mitchell “Heart of Gold” — Neil Young “Goodbye Earl” — The Chicks “Queen Bitch” — David Bowie “No Diggity” — Blackstreet “ocean eyes” — Billie Eilish “Little Red Corvette” — Prince “Fast Car” — Tracy Chapman “Wildest Dreams” — Taylor Swift “Wild Horses” — The Rolling Stones
1.
When they first meet, Alex and Poppy are immediately put off by one another. Have you ever made a friend after a bad first impression?
2.
What’s something you do on vacation that you’re unlikely to do in your daily life? Is there a certain comfort in anonymity?
3.
Have you ever met a goal and found that your reaction wasn’t quite what you expected?
4.
What is your worst vacation memory? Your best?
5.
Poppy is going through professional burnout. Have you ever experienced that kind of fatigue? How did you get through it?
6.
Which one of Alex and Poppy’s vacations would you most want to take? Which would you least want to take?
7.
Having grown up in a small town, Poppy struggles to break free of her reputation—or at least struggles to believe she can. When have you felt misunderstood, and how did you get past it?
8.
Why do you think it takes Poppy and Alex so long to admit their feelings to one another?
9.
Rachel has a lot to say about contentment versus purpose. In your own life, do you prize one above the other? Are these ideas mutually exclusive or can you have both?
10. Do you think Poppy and Alex are going to make it?