When I started working on You & Me on Vacation, I didn’t set out to write an homage to When Harry Met Sally, but looking back, it’s obvious how much the classic Nora Ephron rom-com influenced me. It’s not just the shared car ride home or the instant dislike—or even the friendship spanning years and the evolution of inside jokes—it’s that at its core, this book, like the movie, is about that once-in-a-lifetime kind of true, bone-deep, unconditional friendship that becomes such a part of your DNA that you could never feel quite like yourself again without it. Alex and Poppy, Poppy and Alex.
Despite being told across twelve years’ worth of trips, that’s what this book is really about: about finding home in an unlikely place, in an unlikely person. About learning to hold onto it, and carry it with you, wherever you go.
So while we might not all be able to hop on an airplane or stuff ourselves into bus seats, scour Groupon for discounted country-music-themed motels and questionably safe water-taxi services, I hope this book carries you somewhere magical. I hope it lets you feel ocean breezes in your hair and smell spilled beer on a karaoke bar’s floor. And then I hope it brings you back. That it brings you home, and fills you with ferocious gratitude for the people you love.
Emily Henry studied creative writing at Hope College and the New York Center for Art & Media Studies, and now spends most of her time in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the part of Kentucky just beneath it. Emily’s debut adult novel, Beach Read, spent 9 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.