Contemporary romcoms are not supposed to be a struggle to get through. They're supposed to be light and cute and fun and this book was not that.
I didnContemporary romcoms are not supposed to be a struggle to get through. They're supposed to be light and cute and fun and this book was not that.
I didn't like a single thing, except for the cat, which isn't even in the story that much. Okay, I lie, there was one time where I nearly laughed out loud, but that's it.
Poppy and Alex are both boring, Alex less so (even though he was written to be the more boring one of the two of them). It feels like Poppy was trying so hard to be interesting that the opposite happened. She does not speak to me as a character whatsoever.
I love to travel. So I expected to at least like the travelling parts, but the way they were described just made me want to skim over them and move on to the next few lines of dialogue instead.
Next we have the flashbacks. In some books there aren't nearly enough, while in People We Meet On Vacation there were far too many. I did not need to see every single vacation they had for the past 12 years. Two or three of the most meaningful ones would've been enough.
And the romance was bland too. As friends they were alright, if a little cringy, and friends they should've stayed.
Perhaps I'd feel differently if our two leads had sat down to talk to each other at any point during the 10+ years of their friendship, but they did no such thing. And now we have this mess.
On top of that, the whole book was building up towards the big reveal, the reason they've barely spoken for two years after the mysterious Croatia trip - only for it to be a huge let down. Yet another thing that could've been solved by TALKING!
The ending...it wasn't a typical romance book/movie ending and (view spoiler)[ their separation (hide spoiler)] didn't last that long, so it gets a small brownie point for trying.
Although, (view spoiler)[the mutual love confessions (hide spoiler)] didn't do anything for me, likely because I didn't like the characters to begin with. I'm just happy it's finally over.
Do I still plan on reading Beach Read? It's hard to say after this. But I did see people saying they liked it a lot better than this, so we'll see. ...more