Author: Emily Henry

Item: People We Meet on Vacation
Rating: 5
Author: Arielle

BOOK REVIEW: People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

February 4, 2022 / Arielle / 2 Comments

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry
Purchase on: Amazon, iBooks
Add to: Goodreads

Synopsis:
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?

From the New York Times bestselling author of Beach Read, a sparkling new novel that will leave you with the warm, hazy afterglow usually reserved for the best vacations.

Review

“I don’t think I knew I was lonely until I met you.”

Well, well, well it’s been a good long while since I’ve read a friends to lovers story that has made me go OKAY WHY DO I ALWAYS SAY I LOVE ENEMIES TO LOVERS BEST??!?!!? amirite?

This is only my second Emily Henry book but you better believe she has already skyrocketed up to the top of my favorite authors in the contemporary genre. Her writing is so crisp and her banter is hilarious but also REAL. Sometimes when authors lean too hard into banter it becomes almost TOO funny and therefore unbelievable. Like…are people really that funny? Are they always able to have these off the cuff back and forths??? Nahh lol.

Poppy and Alex though hit all my favorite everythings. They met in college and found out they were from neighboring towns but had never met before. They are different enough that their friendship easily wouldn’t have worked out…only that it did. Because not only are they special, but they are special to one another. They are the kind of person that you meet once and have this chance and maybe almost seemingly nonexistent spark with, maybe don’t see for some time, and then meet up and boom–it’s destiny. Does that make sense? It does for me because I had the same exact experience with my husband in college and looking back at the continuous CHANCE encounters of it all makes me giddy.

So, yes, I love this book for the reminders that it served me but also because of how it was told. We get snippets of their past and of their present. We find out what makes their relationship special, where things may have went “wrong,” where they fell in love, where they just couldn’t let one another go. The vacations themselves were also a perk to me because it’s the dead ass of winter here and any picture that can be painted of sunshine and warmth is a balm to my soul.

Overall I think…nay, I KNOW I loved this more than Beach Read even though that was soo, so good, too. I cannot wait to get my hands on anything and everything she comes up with next.

BOOK REVIEW: Hello Girls by Brittany Cavallaro & Emily Henry

July 2, 2019 / Cassie / 2 Comments

Hello Girls by Brittany Cavallaro, Emily Henry
Purchase on: Amazon, iBooks
Add to: Goodreads

Synopsis:
Best friends are forged by fire. For Winona Olsen and Lucille Pryce, that fire happened the night they met outside the police station—both deciding whether to turn their families in.

Winona has been starving for life in the seemingly perfect home that she shares with her seemingly perfect father, celebrity weatherman Stormy Olsen. No one knows that he locks the pantry door to control her eating and leaves bruises where no one can see them.

Lucille has been suffocating beneath the needs of her mother and her drug-dealing brother, wondering if there’s more out there for her than disappearing waitress tips and generations of barely getting by.

One harrowing night, Winona and Lucille realize they can’t wait until graduation to start their new lives. They need out. Now. All they need is three grand, fast. And really, a stolen convertible to take them from Michigan to Las Vegas can’t hurt.

It struck her then that the two of them were crouched between a church and a police station – two places of confession – and that, for whatever reason, they’d chosen each other instead.

Thank you to Edelweiss, the authors and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

From the opening chapters, I knew I was going to be hooked into this book. I thought the way Winona and Lucille were introduced was brilliant and captivating. Immediately I felt for both of these girls and their horrible home lives. In in spite of their terrible families, the bond they formed was truly inspiring. The deep friendship between the two was what kept the story staying grounded when some of the other elements get a bit wild and crazy.

Lucille couldn’t have wants. She couldn’t have needs. What she had was a hole that she shoveled her love into, a hole she couldn’t see the bottom of until she met Winona.

During the initial part of Winona and Lucille’s cross country road trip, I found my interest waning. After the awesome beginning, it took the story a little while to pick back up.

But as Winona and Lucille get closer to their final destination, the twists and turns pick up and more characters are introduced to the story. There’s some great moments about first relationships, trust, toxic family relationships and jealousy among friends.

Sometime since yesterday, it was like Winona had gone from being a book Lucille knew by heart to being the same book with its ending ripped out.

The ending is quite explosive, and honestly, a little heartbreaking. However, I really liked how the authors chose to end it the way they did.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and thought there were a lot really great themes packed in a Thelma and Louise-type road trip story. The writing was excellent and engaging. My main fault was the pacing, as it definitely lulled at times. Also, sometimes the story seemed to go off the rails a little bit and was a bit unrealistic, but overall I enjoyed it.

Hello Girls is available August 6, 2019.

“I don’t know you or your business, honey, but I can tell you this – you two are the Lamborghini of problems.”