I was genuinely fighting for my life trying to finish this book. This has definitely been my least favourite Emily Henry book and for so many reasons.

I hated both Poppy and Alex. I found Poppy to be extremely annoying and quirky in a bad way. Alex on the other hand had the personality of a stale piece of white bread. I didn't find anything interesting about his character at all.

They're also both walking red flags for clearly feeling so much between each other for so long and still dating other people. My girl Sarah deserved so much better. I get that this was Poppy and Alex's story and we're supposed to be happy for them but I just felt really bad for Sarah the whole time. Imagine being in a long-term, committed relationship with someone and the entire time they're secretly in love with their best friend who they claim their relationship with is purely platonic.

The dual timelines made it so hard to be engaged in this book. I feel like Happy Place did a much better job of doing that. Whereas this one was so frustrating.

I also think the concept of a heterosexual guy and a heterosexual girl going on vacation together is so odd. I get that they're best friends but I would not feel comfortable at all if my partner was taking a trip with just one other girl who's straight it's just so odd. And if the roles were reversed I certainly would not be doing that myself. It was also odd how she kept describing them to be sibling like.

I was also annoyed with how many times she constantly mentioned "the sad puppy face" or "what happened in Croatia". And what happened in Croatia wasn't even that crazy??? Like they barely spent time on that trip and made out for like 5 min. That was the thing that this novel kept bringing up?? I was expecting a lot more. I just think it's unbelievable for best friends of a decade to stop speaking to each other over 1 drunken make out session. They're adults, surely by now they've learned enough communication skills to talk it out properly?

And when they finally kissed/got together it just seemed out of nowhere. They lacked so much chemistry. There were no nice build up to it.

Anyways, very long rant. I really tried to get into this book and enjoy it but I couldn't. I found both main characters to be insufferable and couldn't wait for this book to finish so that I could be done with it.