I can tell you right now, January 24th, this will be in my top reads of 2021. Mark my words.

Poppy and Alex meet at orientation week in college and don’t think about each other again until the end of freshman year, when they share a car ride back home for summer break and, even though they’re polar opposites, they become inseparable ever since. Right then they establish one of the main pillars of their friendship: The Summer Trip. Every summer, the two of them will go on an adventure somewhere new.

Now fast-forward to present day, 12 years later. Poppy is a travel journalist living in New York (basically getting paid to travel the world and write about it #dreamjob) and Alex is a high school teacher still living in their small Ohio hometown.

We’re told this story through Poppy’s eyes, switching between present time – when she and Alex are in no-speaking terms since their summer trip to Croatia two years ago –, and the past, as she recalls each one of their vacations together leading to that ill-fated trip. Poppy is convinced they can make their friendship work again, all she has to do is take Alex on yet another summer trip, like old times.

This story spoke to me (100% unintentional pun – I’m not crazy, you’ll understand the reference if you read it) on so many levels I can’t even begin to put it into words. Even though Poppy and Alex are like the day and the night, I recognized parts of me in both of them. I’m a let’s-book-this-random-trip-and-see-where-the-wind-takes-us kind of person like Poppy as much as I’m a let’s-stay-home-all-day-with-a-book-and-not-socialize introvert like Alex. They are both relatable, imperfect, insecure and laugh-out-loud funny in their own ways. I could just keep reading about them forever.

The relationship between the two of them and how that friends-to-lovers was inevitable all along was beautifully done. I laughed, I cried and really, really, really enjoyed this book. Like a lot. It’s the perfect opposites-attract, slow-burn, i-want-you-as-my-best-friend-and-also-everything-else-but-it-scares-the-shit-out-of-me we all deserve and all I want to do is forget it so I can read it all over again.

As Emily Henry herself puts it, this is ultimately a book about home. Because it’s less about the places we go than the people we meet along the way. But most of all, it’s about the ones who stay and become home.

Now that’s all said, please excuse me while I go find myself a copy of Beach Read and get book-drunk on that one too, because what else am I supposed to do with my life now?

A massive thank you to NetGalley and Penguin UK for an e-ARC in exchange of an honest and voluntary review.