People We Meet on Vacation

Emily Henry’s dazzling • A gleaming redesigned cover • Stunning illustrated endpapers and matching sprayed edges that will take you poolside in sunny Palm Springs • A copper foil–stamped case, and… • A new letter from the author and exclusive postcard art 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?

Autorentext
Emily Henry is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Great Big Beautiful Life, Funny Story, Happy Place, Book Lovers, People We Meet on Vacation, and Beach Read. She studied creative writing at Hope College, and now spends most of her time in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the part of Kentucky just beneath it. Find her on Instagram @emilyhenrywrites.

Klappentext

**NOW A NETFLIX FILM! • Emily Henry’s dazzling New York Times bestselling novel now in this special hardcover collector’s edition with:

• A gleaming redesigned cover**
• Stunning illustrated endpapers and matching sprayed edges that will take you poolside in sunny Palm Springs
• A copper foil–stamped case, and…
• A new letter from the author and exclusive postcard art

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?

Leseprobe
PROLOGUE

Five Summers Ago

On vacation, you can be anyone you want.

Like a good book or an incredible outfit, being on vacation transports you into another version of yourself.

In your day-­to-­day life, maybe you can t even bob your head to the radio without being embarrassed, but on the right twinkly-­light-­strung patio, with the right steel drum band, you ll find yourself whirling and twirling with the best of them.

On vacation, your hair changes. The water is different, maybe the shampoo. Maybe you don t bother to wash your hair at all, or brush it, because the salty ocean water curls it up in a way you love. You think, Maybe I could do this at home too. Maybe I could be this person who doesn t brush her hair, who doesn t mind being sweaty or having sand in all her crevices.

On vacation, you strike up conversations with strangers, and forget that there are any stakes. If it turns out impossibly awkward, who cares? You ll never see them again!

You re whoever you want to be. You can do whatever you want.

Okay, so maybe not whatever you want. Sometimes the weather forces you into a particular situation, such as the one I m in now, and you have to find second-­rate ways to entertain yourself as you wait out the rain. On my way out of the bathroom, I pause. Partly, this is because I m still working on my game plan. Mostly, though, it s because the floor is so sticky that I lose my sandal and have to hobble back for it. I love everything about this place in theory, but in practice, I think letting my bare foot touch the anonymous filth on the laminate might be a good way to contract one of those rare diseases kept in the refrigerated vials of a secret CDC facility.

I dance-­hop back to my shoe, slip my toes through the thin orange straps, and turn to survey the bar: the press of sticky bodies; the lazy whorl of thatched fans overhead; the door propped open so that, occasionally, a burst of rain rips in off the black night to cool the sweating crowd. In the corner, a jukebox haloed in neon light plays the Flamingos I Only Have Eyes for You.

It s a resort town but a locals bar, free of printed sundresses and Tommy Bahama shirts, though also sadly lacking in cocktails garnished with spears of tropical fruit.

If not for the storm, I would ve chosen somewhere else for my last night in town. All week long the rain has been so bad, the thunder so constant, that my dreams of sandy white beaches and glossy speedboats were dashed, and I along with the rest of the disappointed vacationers have spent my days pounding piña coladas in any crammed tourist trap I could find.

Tonight, though, I couldn t take any more dense crowds, long wait times, or gray-­haired men in wedding rings drunkenly winking at me over their wives shoulders. Thus I found myself here.

In a sticky-­floored bar called only BAR, scouring the meager crowd for my target.

He s sitting at the corner of BAR s bar itself. A man about my age, twenty-­five, sandy haired and tall with broad shoulders, though so hunched you might not notice either of these last two facts on first glance. His head is bent over his phone, a look of quiet concentration visible in his profile. His teeth worry at his full bottom lip as his finger slowly swipes across the screen.

Though not Disney World level packed, this place is loud. Halfway between the jukebox crooning creepy late-­fifties tunes and the mounted TV opposite it, from which a weatherman shouts about record-­breaking rain, there s a gaggle of men with identical hacking laughs that keep bursting out all at once. At the far end of the bar, the bartender keeps smacking the counter for emphasis as she chats up a yellow-­haired woman.

The storm&