*This article contains spoilers for People We Meet on Vacation*
Emily Henry, author of plenty of amazing romance novels, is now taking the film industry by storm. Having written Beach Read, Book Lovers, and People We Meet on Vacation (PWMOV), she’s taking her pages and turning them onto the screen.
The first movie to come out was PWMOV on Netflix, bringing the resurgence of the romcom. As with all movie adaptations, changes were made, but what were the major ones?
First Meeting
In the novel, the main characters, Poppy Wright and Alex Nilsen, actually meet months before the first road trip back home. They met at orientation for Boston University, and it was an awkward first encounter for Poppy, who thought they’d never meet again.
In the movie, they meet for the first time just before the trip home. While the overall first impression vibe is the same, it lacks that bit of shock in the second meeting, when both thought they’d never cross paths again.
The Rekindling
In the novel, Poppy texts Alex on a whim. She’s living in New York, working as a travel journalist, while Alex lives in their hometown and works as an English teacher. She texts him one night, hoping to fix their friendship. This leads to an eventual plan for Poppy to join Alex as a plus one for his brother’s wedding in Palm Springs, California, after two weeks of texting.
In the movie, the characters are strung together again because Alex’s brother personally invites Poppy to his wedding in Barcelona, Spain. Rather than her appearance being a surprise for the whole family, she was personally invited, and while she wasn’t originally planning on going to the wedding, her presence was wanted.
The Situation
In the novel, Poppy lies to Alex, saying that her company is paying for her vacation because her manager wants her to do a feature on the town. In reality, she took her own personal vacation, paying for everything out of her own pocket. This gets the two talking and being with each other in a way that was similar to the beginning of their relationship.
In the book, the two share a rental apartment, have an itinerary for before the wedding, and overall, spend more time together before the wedding festivities take place.
In the movie, the two have their own living situations. Poppy and Alex aren’t forced together; when they want to hang out, they do it voluntarily. They don’t have to decide between the couch and the bed at night. The only time this debacle comes up is when Alex pulls a muscle in his back while checking out the air conditioning.
The Vacations
My biggest gripe with this adaptation is how the vacations differ greatly. While it’s practically impossible to get all the details correct, the vacations, which are the main events in the whole book, are some of the things that suffered the most cuts.
The vacations in the book have a lot more activities and more inside jokes between the two characters. One major joke is the wood carving. Originally, the two were persuaded to buy a wood carving of a sasquatch, but they never ended up getting it. The artist states that sometimes art just speaks to a person, and that becomes the running joke of this trip. The New Orleans trip had the joke that theme matters.
While the movie did an excellent job showcasing the fun they had on this trip, it left out why they decided to act as other people during this trip. Every vacation had some sort of deeper joke that was the underlying message of their trips.
The pair’s trip ended completely differently in the book. First, Alex and Sarah never got engaged. The trip ended with Poppy having a pregnancy scare, and the only person able to calm her was Alex. This trip highlighted the romantic tension between the two, even if neither wanted to act on these feelings.
This wasn’t the trip that caused the rift between Poppy and Alex. It was the trip to Croatia that changed their friendship forever. This was one of the only trips Alex went on that the journalism company paid for; it caused an awkward tension between the characters. A photographer was trailing them the entire time; there was a mix-up in the rooms, and the weather caused many items to be scratched off their list of activities.
On the last night of the trip, Alex ends up in Poppy’s room, and the two end up making out. Both feel awful after Alex leaves the room, and the two never have the same relationship.
Leaving Croatia and returning home, the couple slowly start dwindling in contact and eventually stop talking as a whole. With the movie leaving out this vital vacation, viewers are lacking that fundamental breaking point in their relationship.
The Makeup
In the book, Poppy and Alex have a wonderful time at the wedding, having some of the best three days of their lives. As they’re both heading to the airport, Alex wants to take things a step further with their relationship, and Poppy is on the fence about it. He tells her to figure out what she wants and then to come talk to him.
It takes her a few months to finally figure out what she wants; she goes to therapy and quits her job. She flies back to her hometown and wants to make it all up to Alex.
She runs into his ex at his teaching job, finding out he was going to leave for the weekend, but to check the local bar where most teachers go on Fridays.
Poppy finds him, confesses her love and all the changes she’s made, but Alex stays silent. She takes this as a rejection and leaves. Crying all the way to her car, she’s preparing to go back to New York alone.
That is, until Alex runs outside and confesses that he’s always loved her and they should figure out their futures together. The two end up living in New York, with Alex teaching at an all-girls school, and Poppy getting her own column titled, The People We Meet in New York.
Movie Alex and Poppy have a different resolution. They end up having the future conversation in the middle of Alex’s brother’s wedding, with Alex leaving Poppy on the dance floor, and him telling her to find out what she wants before reaching out again.
She heads back to New York and quits her job right away. Taking only a few days away from Alex, she flies home and shows up at his house. Seeing him take his daily run, she chases after him, and they have their confession in the middle of the street. The final scene is of the two of them at Poppy’s apartment in New York having a happy home life.
While most movies never do the book justice, the TPWMOV movie wasn’t the worst adaptation that’s ever been made. If you separate the movie and book and look at them as two different pieces of media, it’s easy to enjoy them both. With the book averaging 3.85/5 stars on Goodreads and the movie having 3.2/5 stars on Letterboxd, both are easy watches or reads.
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