The real question is whether Poppy actually wants constant movement, or whether she has simply become good at using movement to avoid asking what would make her feel settled.
That idea of home ended up mattering more to me than the destinations themselves. Poppy can go almost anywhere, but travel does not automatically solve loneliness or dissatisfaction. Alex, meanwhile, can appear content with predictability while still wanting things he is reluctant to admit. Their relationship works best when the book stops treating them as “adventurous person versus homebody” and starts asking what each of them is afraid to change.
The friendship-to-romance transition is also stronger because of their familiarity. They are not discovering each other from scratch. They already know the embarrassing stories, the weaknesses, the habits, and the parts of each other's personality that can become exhausting. That makes attraction more complicated than simple chemistry. Choosing romance means risking a friendship that has already survived years of distance, changing relationships, and very different lives.
The present-day vacation carries most of that tension. Poppy and Alex are together again after a period of distance, but neither is willing to speak plainly about why things went wrong. The silence between them often works better than the more openly romantic scenes. A casual conversation can feel uncomfortable because both characters are aware of something they refuse to name. Small gestures matter because they are happening between people who already know what those gestures usually mean.
That is also where my main frustration with the novel begins. A lot of the conflict depends on Poppy and Alex not saying things that could have been discussed much earlier. I understand why long friendships can make honesty harder rather than easier; admitting romantic feelings can threaten the safest relationship someone has. Still, there were points where the miscommunication began to feel prolonged mainly because the plot needed the tension to continue.
I wanted slightly more messiness and slightly less avoidance. If two people have known each other this long, their inability to ask direct questions needs to feel completely convincing. Sometimes it did. At other times, I could feel the structure holding the conversation back until the right chapter.
The travel memories have a similar weakness. Some trips are vivid because something important happens emotionally, while others blend together into a pleasant montage of destinations, hotel rooms, weather problems, and shared jokes. That fits a book built around repeated vacations, but I occasionally wanted fewer locations and more time inside the ones that mattered most. The strongest trips are not memorable because of where Poppy and Alex go. They are memorable because something changes between them there.
Even so, the accumulated history is what kept the romance believable. A single summer would not have carried the same weight. The book needs all those previous trips because the relationship is built from repetition. They keep choosing each other as travel companions, keep returning to the same friendship, and keep finding comfort in a person whose life looks very different from their own.
I also appreciated that the story gives Poppy's career and dissatisfaction some space. She has achieved a version of the life she once wanted: travel, experiences, stories, movement. Yet getting what she imagined does not make her automatically fulfilled. That gives the romance a larger context. Alex is not simply the missing piece that fixes her life. Poppy has to decide what she actually wants before a relationship can mean much.
The same is true of Alex. His quieter life is not presented as empty just because Poppy's world is more outwardly exciting. His desires are simply less visible. The novel becomes more convincing when both characters have to reconsider the identities they have built around themselves rather than just admit they are attracted to each other.
What stayed with me most was the difference between excitement and fulfillment. Travel can make life feel bigger, but bigger does not necessarily mean more satisfying. Stability can look boring from the outside and still contain the relationships that make someone feel known. People We Meet on Vacation is at its best when it lets Poppy and Alex wrestle with those differences instead of treating one lifestyle as the answer.
I did wish the central misunderstanding had been resolved sooner, and some of the vacation sections blur together once the pattern becomes familiar. The novel is also clearly working toward a romantic destination that most readers will predict early. But I did not mind knowing where it was going because the history between Poppy and Alex mattered more than the surprise of getting there.
For me, the book ultimately works because the romance grows out of something that already feels lived-in. The private jokes, old disappointments, comfortable silences, and memories of places they visited together make the relationship feel like it existed before the novel began. The travel gives the story movement, but the friendship gives it weight.
