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Happy Place
Goodreads Choice Award
Winner for Best Romance (2023)Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now—for reasons they’re still not discussing—they don’t.
They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.
Which is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.
Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week… in front of those who know you best?
A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.
They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.
Which is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.
Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week… in front of those who know you best?
A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published April 25, 2023
About the author
Emily Henry
16 books121k followersEmily Henry is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Book Lovers, People We Meet on Vacation, and Beach Read, as well as the forthcoming Happy Place. She lives and writes in Cincinnati and the part of Kentucky just beneath it.
Find her on Instagram @EmilyHenryWrites.
Find her on Instagram @EmilyHenryWrites.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 101,405 reviews
April 30, 2024
➸ 4.25 stars
— alexa, play maroon by taylor swift.
can’t believe emily henry had the audacity to write a book about me!! ms emily reached inside my brain and took out parts of my life to write this book, it’s uncanny. i am constantly overwhelmed with how she can take the most deepest inner emotions of a person and articulate it in a way that is so relatable it makes the reader feel seen. i just love how she describes the complexity of adult life!
did i finish this book or did this book finish me? even though this book is called “happy place” i’m just here to warn you that this book will not necessarily make you happy. the audacity of EH to even call it that when this book fucking crushed me to pieces, ripped my heart out of chest, stomped on it 928482 times and then flung it into the ocean. this story explores heavy topics, it’s filled with love and loss, grief, hurt, trauma, change, happiness and unhappiness + friendships and family; this book was more melancholy, thoughtful and deep—this is ultimately why i loved it sm!
— this story is narrated by harriet and it is alternated between a past and present timeline, and explores how this tight-knit friend group met and harriet’s life since then. the parallels constantly left me in awe! we also become immersed in wyn and harriet’s past relationship and we are taken back to how they first met and fell in love.
the past chapters are shown to be harriet’s “happy place” which is when her time is spent at a cottage in maine — an annual trip she takes with her boyfriend and best friends.
— second chance romance trope is honestly one of my favourite tropes, but only when it’s done well. i need to feel the connection between both characters, what made them fall apart and their journey finding their way back to each other, and i can say this book excelled at that. this book had me feeling all the feels. literally the PINING in this omg and the ANGSTTT and the pain, my poor lil heart couldn’t take it all. wyn and harriet were so torn up over each other, but they are so bad at communicating their vulnerability to one another. the chemistry between them is palpable despite the fact they’re not together anymore.
PSA: this book relies heavily on past miscommunication/lack of communication so if you’re a miscommunication hater like me, be aware. these two are so broken and damaged, i couldn’t hate on it. harriet has a tendency to push everyone away, including wyn; and wyn has a tendency to worry and overthink things—which in time ended up clashing together but it was handled so immaculately, i found it bearable and i just wanted to see them both get their happy ending.
➳ harriet kilpatrick:
harriet is me, i am her. she puts other peoples needs and feelings before her own to keep the peace. the way she has an inability to show others her emotions, especially during the break up bc she fears she will be a burden really hit close to home. her character was frustrating at times, but nonetheless she was so loveable and understandable bc her upbringing and family dynamic affected her as she grew up. she was never taught how to fight with the ones she loves and that took a toll on the way she communicates in relationships. but i just constantly wanted to grab her by the shoulders, shake her and scream “YOU ARE ENOUGH” i love her character sm, it was definitely bc i related to her in an unnerving way *cough*i also hate my job. her love for wyn was devastatingly beautiful, the way she loves and feels is so deep.
➳ wyn connor:
wyn, wyn, wyn, oh how i love u. when his love language is physical touch 🤭 i died at that. my soul left my body and descended to heaven, not even joking- he’s my baby boy fr. we see his character as very self conscious and never believes in himself, we can see that he feels he is not enough for harriet and his self doubt instincts always take over but he loves HARD. on that topic; i didn’t understand how he can love so hard, but walk away so quickly without fighting for harriet, but it makes sense since they’re so bad at communicating 🥲
— ms henry wrote another swoon-worthy character who is deeply flawed but loveable at the same time. i just love the way EH handles mental health topics and always manages to give so much emotional depth to her characters.
꒰ wyn and harriet: ꒱
i love both of their characters and i was rooting for them the entire book!! the witty banter and sarcasm between them had me giggling fr. you could feel the connection between them both, they are soulmates!! they both ache for each other and you can feel it all pour out of the pages. harriet and wyn are so different from each other—yet so similar, this is why they instantly connected with one another. i just love how EH made their conflict realistic and not forced and dragged out. we see them both focus on their self-growth and healing, but seeing harriet go through her self-discovery journey and then finding her way back to wyn has me in my feels rn, it just felt so real. 🥹
➷ the friendships and connections in this book is so strong, but it also tackles how friendships can change over time as adult friendships can become so difficult to maintain as you age with everyone being in different stages in their life. i loved seeing this group navigate through it all, i crave a friendship like what they all have even though it’s dysfunctional and the conflict would be over lack of communication was juvenile but it made it feel so much more real. my main take from this was that friendships are love stories too. i just love platonic love!! also, the theme of found family runs so deep in this story, she executed it so perfectly >>>
— overall, this book was phenomenal and i absolutely adored it, EH writing is just *chefs kiss* if you’re looking for a romance galore book i’m sorry to say this book isn’t for you, this book explores more about a friend group and their dynamics, growing up and letting go. i will keep saying, HER BOOKS ARE 100% MORE WOMEN’S FICTION, THE ROMANCE IS JUST A PLUS!!
— but, i wasn’t a fan of the ending honestly.. it was really rushed and it didn’t fit harriet’s character; the decision she made fr left me shocked lmao. she threw all that away for a hobby, in this economy?? girl- 😳🧍🏻♀️
──────────────────────────
damn, she got me again!! no thoughts, just tears rn. EH, i will hunt you down for making me endure so much pain. rtc 😔❤️🩹
──────────────────────────
happy happy place release day to my emily henry girlies!! this is a big day for us all. now bring me the angst, pain and tears.
”in every universe, it’s you for me.
even if it’s not me for you.”
— alexa, play maroon by taylor swift.
can’t believe emily henry had the audacity to write a book about me!! ms emily reached inside my brain and took out parts of my life to write this book, it’s uncanny. i am constantly overwhelmed with how she can take the most deepest inner emotions of a person and articulate it in a way that is so relatable it makes the reader feel seen. i just love how she describes the complexity of adult life!
did i finish this book or did this book finish me? even though this book is called “happy place” i’m just here to warn you that this book will not necessarily make you happy. the audacity of EH to even call it that when this book fucking crushed me to pieces, ripped my heart out of chest, stomped on it 928482 times and then flung it into the ocean. this story explores heavy topics, it’s filled with love and loss, grief, hurt, trauma, change, happiness and unhappiness + friendships and family; this book was more melancholy, thoughtful and deep—this is ultimately why i loved it sm!
— this story is narrated by harriet and it is alternated between a past and present timeline, and explores how this tight-knit friend group met and harriet’s life since then. the parallels constantly left me in awe! we also become immersed in wyn and harriet’s past relationship and we are taken back to how they first met and fell in love.
the past chapters are shown to be harriet’s “happy place” which is when her time is spent at a cottage in maine — an annual trip she takes with her boyfriend and best friends.
”you are in all of my happiest places. you are where my mind goes when it needs to be soothed.”
— second chance romance trope is honestly one of my favourite tropes, but only when it’s done well. i need to feel the connection between both characters, what made them fall apart and their journey finding their way back to each other, and i can say this book excelled at that. this book had me feeling all the feels. literally the PINING in this omg and the ANGSTTT and the pain, my poor lil heart couldn’t take it all. wyn and harriet were so torn up over each other, but they are so bad at communicating their vulnerability to one another. the chemistry between them is palpable despite the fact they’re not together anymore.
PSA: this book relies heavily on past miscommunication/lack of communication so if you’re a miscommunication hater like me, be aware. these two are so broken and damaged, i couldn’t hate on it. harriet has a tendency to push everyone away, including wyn; and wyn has a tendency to worry and overthink things—which in time ended up clashing together but it was handled so immaculately, i found it bearable and i just wanted to see them both get their happy ending.
➳ harriet kilpatrick:
harriet is me, i am her. she puts other peoples needs and feelings before her own to keep the peace. the way she has an inability to show others her emotions, especially during the break up bc she fears she will be a burden really hit close to home. her character was frustrating at times, but nonetheless she was so loveable and understandable bc her upbringing and family dynamic affected her as she grew up. she was never taught how to fight with the ones she loves and that took a toll on the way she communicates in relationships. but i just constantly wanted to grab her by the shoulders, shake her and scream “YOU ARE ENOUGH” i love her character sm, it was definitely bc i related to her in an unnerving way *cough*
➳ wyn connor:
wyn, wyn, wyn, oh how i love u. when his love language is physical touch 🤭 i died at that. my soul left my body and descended to heaven, not even joking- he’s my baby boy fr. we see his character as very self conscious and never believes in himself, we can see that he feels he is not enough for harriet and his self doubt instincts always take over but he loves HARD. on that topic; i didn’t understand how he can love so hard, but walk away so quickly without fighting for harriet, but it makes sense since they’re so bad at communicating 🥲
— ms henry wrote another swoon-worthy character who is deeply flawed but loveable at the same time. i just love the way EH handles mental health topics and always manages to give so much emotional depth to her characters.
꒰ wyn and harriet: ꒱
i love both of their characters and i was rooting for them the entire book!! the witty banter and sarcasm between them had me giggling fr. you could feel the connection between them both, they are soulmates!! they both ache for each other and you can feel it all pour out of the pages. harriet and wyn are so different from each other—yet so similar, this is why they instantly connected with one another. i just love how EH made their conflict realistic and not forced and dragged out. we see them both focus on their self-growth and healing, but seeing harriet go through her self-discovery journey and then finding her way back to wyn has me in my feels rn, it just felt so real. 🥹
“i thought i made you […] just by wishing.”
➷ the friendships and connections in this book is so strong, but it also tackles how friendships can change over time as adult friendships can become so difficult to maintain as you age with everyone being in different stages in their life. i loved seeing this group navigate through it all, i crave a friendship like what they all have even though it’s dysfunctional and the conflict would be over lack of communication was juvenile but it made it feel so much more real. my main take from this was that friendships are love stories too. i just love platonic love!! also, the theme of found family runs so deep in this story, she executed it so perfectly >>>
— overall, this book was phenomenal and i absolutely adored it, EH writing is just *chefs kiss* if you’re looking for a romance galore book i’m sorry to say this book isn’t for you, this book explores more about a friend group and their dynamics, growing up and letting go. i will keep saying, HER BOOKS ARE 100% MORE WOMEN’S FICTION, THE ROMANCE IS JUST A PLUS!!
— but, i wasn’t a fan of the ending honestly.. it was really rushed and it didn’t fit harriet’s character; the decision she made fr left me shocked lmao. she threw all that away for a hobby, in this economy?? girl- 😳🧍🏻♀️
──────────────────────────
damn, she got me again!! no thoughts, just tears rn. EH, i will hunt you down for making me endure so much pain. rtc 😔❤️🩹
──────────────────────────
happy happy place release day to my emily henry girlies!! this is a big day for us all. now bring me the angst, pain and tears.
April 24, 2024
Buckle up, bitches, because I have some things to say.
P.S: if you liked this book, I'm really really really happy for you. I wish that could be me! <3
My review may contain some spoilers, you've been warned.
I decided to give Emily Henry another chance after Beach Read, which I did not finish because it was bad in my opinion. So, I said "Why not? Maybe this one turns out to be pretty good!" and now that I finished it, I've realized (after a long night of overthinking and self-loathing. Yeah, I know, it wasn't my best night, lol) that maybe romance as a main plot isn't my genre.
First of all, I've never ever been in love in my almost 25 years of miserable existence, nor someone has been in love with me, so I don't actually know how it really feels, (that's a deep and traumatic conversation for another day), but to me it's kind of unreal that people can last years and not get bored. Please, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's not a real thing , but I can't even start to imagine someone loving me for so long without getting bored of me. (Plot twist: deep down, I'm a hopeless romantic who yearns to love and be loved for a really long time and to be in a healthy relationship, but that's not gonna happen, so).
Basically, Happy Place is about a second chance romance, between Harriet and Wyn (I swear I've never heard the name Wyndham until the day I started this book), who broke up five months ago and reunite for a trip with their best friends. They have to act like they're still together and pretend happiness and such just to not causing chaos.
The jump from past to present was not for me. While I enjoy those kind of flashbacks, things were "interesting" in the present than in the past.
I felt like a fucking third wheel. Or perhaps like I was in the middle of a friend group which I wasn't part of and it made me feel uncomfortable, (I've felt like that in the past, in many friend groups, and it feels awful) and if EH's point was to make me feel like I belonged with them, well, it didn't work out. They didn't even feel like best friends because there was a lot of tension and they were keeping secrets from each other (yes, I know this last thing happens a lot irl).
The side characters had no personality whatsoever. They felt very flat and boring. Sabrina was controlling and kind of bitchy. Parth had zero personality. Cleo and Kimmy were okay, until I felt like they were not a lesbian couple, but a heterosexual couple where one of them is a guy with a girl's name. Don't come at me for this, I just felt it like that. I did enjoy when Sabrina was called out. I get that they were in that trip mourning their youth and trying to have a good time, but goddamn it was painful. I just could not stand them. Trust me, I'm good at mourning my wasted and non existent youth, but this was pure hell.
Wyn was flat and boring. Gods, he had no personality and it was pretty clear. Even a shoe or a rock has more personality than Wyn Connor. What I hated the most is that basically Harriet was the one making the moves. Always. Man, if you really "love her" then go and fucking fight for her. MAKE SOME GODDAMN MOVES TO GET HER BACK AND LOVE HER PROPERLY.
And Harriet, girly pop, please, have a little bit more of self-steem and respect for yourself. Stop being a people pleaser and try to save everyone. !
I hate miscommunication. I believe it's one of the worst tropes ever and it's used throughout the book. Harriet complains and whines a lot, has a lot of inner monologues but she never says shit. Ma'am, please don't expect that everyone knows what the hell do you want if you never say anything. I'm not defending Wyn either, because he did the same thing. And they were constantly lying about how they were happy and okay. Both, Harriet and Wyn made a lot of assumptions instead of actually talk to each other, which could have spared us from a 400 pages book. Things could have solved up faster if they both had spoken first.
Like, are you going to tell me that after a long-ass relationship of 8 YEARS, neither of you can communicate things? They could have broken up sooner if they just talked things through. It's like both communication and understanding were missing in the entire book. Also, breaking up with her over the phone? Are you fucking kidding me?
This book could have been better if we had Wyn's POV. He obviously was struggling with depression, the loss of his father and his mother being diagnosed with Parkinson. We could have understood him more like this. But otherwise, he seemed indifferent about his relationship.
My last straw was... Pottery? Really?
Did you just throw so many years of med school, hard work and your residency for pottery? I don't know how things work for med school in the u.s, but, girly pop, I'm pretty sure that isn't cheap, not even when you study in a good school. And holy shit, she’s a neurosurgery resident. (My dream was to become a neurosurgeon, so I was speechless and almost screaming like Regina George in Mean Girls). I'm still speachless and amazed because how are you gonna pay your +$200,000 debts from pottery? Wyn must be a fucking billionare.
I also felt nothing, nor empathy, sadness, pity or whatever towards any of these characters or their problems and relationships.
The sex scene felt... Off. There was "a lot" of tension going on between Harriet and Wyn from the beginning, but when the sex scene finally came, it disappeared and felt dull.
Anyways, not everything seems bad, lmao.
I have this love/hate relationship with EH's writing style. For one side, there are some phrases where you can relate and say "Same, sis, same.", but for the other side, Emily uses metaphors and stuff like that where is no needed.
The only good thing, perhaps?
I get the hype over Emily Henry's books, I swear I do, but they never captivate me or make me giggle, kick my feet in the air or feel happy. Maybe there's something wrong with me. Maybe, like I said at the beginning of this review, maybe romance as a main is not for me.
I'm not going to include this book in my big hype big lie shelf yet because I honestly didn't have many expectations for Happy Place. Nevermind, I just added to my big hipe, big lie shelf, lmao.
This is where Emily Henry and I part ways.
I guess I have more things to say, but I'll add them when I remember, lmao.
P.S: if you liked this book, I'm really really really happy for you. I wish that could be me! <3
My review may contain some spoilers, you've been warned.
I decided to give Emily Henry another chance after Beach Read, which I did not finish because it was bad in my opinion. So, I said "Why not? Maybe this one turns out to be pretty good!" and now that I finished it, I've realized (after a long night of overthinking and self-loathing. Yeah, I know, it wasn't my best night, lol) that maybe romance as a main plot isn't my genre.
First of all, I've never ever been in love in my almost 25 years of miserable existence, nor someone has been in love with me, so I don't actually know how it really feels, (that's a deep and traumatic conversation for another day), but to me it's kind of unreal that people can last years and not get bored. Please, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's not a real thing , but I can't even start to imagine someone loving me for so long without getting bored of me. (Plot twist: deep down, I'm a hopeless romantic who yearns to love and be loved for a really long time and to be in a healthy relationship, but that's not gonna happen, so).
Basically, Happy Place is about a second chance romance, between Harriet and Wyn (I swear I've never heard the name Wyndham until the day I started this book), who broke up five months ago and reunite for a trip with their best friends. They have to act like they're still together and pretend happiness and such just to not causing chaos.
The jump from past to present was not for me. While I enjoy those kind of flashbacks, things were "interesting" in the present than in the past.
I felt like a fucking third wheel. Or perhaps like I was in the middle of a friend group which I wasn't part of and it made me feel uncomfortable, (I've felt like that in the past, in many friend groups, and it feels awful) and if EH's point was to make me feel like I belonged with them, well, it didn't work out. They didn't even feel like best friends because there was a lot of tension and they were keeping secrets from each other (yes, I know this last thing happens a lot irl).
The side characters had no personality whatsoever. They felt very flat and boring. Sabrina was controlling and kind of bitchy. Parth had zero personality. Cleo and Kimmy were okay, until I felt like they were not a lesbian couple, but a heterosexual couple where one of them is a guy with a girl's name. Don't come at me for this, I just felt it like that. I did enjoy when Sabrina was called out. I get that they were in that trip mourning their youth and trying to have a good time, but goddamn it was painful. I just could not stand them. Trust me, I'm good at mourning my wasted and non existent youth, but this was pure hell.
Wyn was flat and boring. Gods, he had no personality and it was pretty clear. Even a shoe or a rock has more personality than Wyn Connor. What I hated the most is that basically Harriet was the one making the moves. Always. Man, if you really "love her" then go and fucking fight for her. MAKE SOME GODDAMN MOVES TO GET HER BACK AND LOVE HER PROPERLY.
And Harriet, girly pop, please, have a little bit more of self-steem and respect for yourself. Stop being a people pleaser and try to save everyone. !
I hate miscommunication. I believe it's one of the worst tropes ever and it's used throughout the book. Harriet complains and whines a lot, has a lot of inner monologues but she never says shit. Ma'am, please don't expect that everyone knows what the hell do you want if you never say anything. I'm not defending Wyn either, because he did the same thing. And they were constantly lying about how they were happy and okay. Both, Harriet and Wyn made a lot of assumptions instead of actually talk to each other, which could have spared us from a 400 pages book. Things could have solved up faster if they both had spoken first.
Like, are you going to tell me that after a long-ass relationship of 8 YEARS, neither of you can communicate things? They could have broken up sooner if they just talked things through. It's like both communication and understanding were missing in the entire book. Also, breaking up with her over the phone? Are you fucking kidding me?
This book could have been better if we had Wyn's POV. He obviously was struggling with depression, the loss of his father and his mother being diagnosed with Parkinson. We could have understood him more like this. But otherwise, he seemed indifferent about his relationship.
My last straw was... Pottery? Really?
Did you just throw so many years of med school, hard work and your residency for pottery? I don't know how things work for med school in the u.s, but, girly pop, I'm pretty sure that isn't cheap, not even when you study in a good school. And holy shit, she’s a neurosurgery resident. (My dream was to become a neurosurgeon, so I was speechless and almost screaming like Regina George in Mean Girls). I'm still speachless and amazed because how are you gonna pay your +$200,000 debts from pottery? Wyn must be a fucking billionare.
I also felt nothing, nor empathy, sadness, pity or whatever towards any of these characters or their problems and relationships.
The sex scene felt... Off. There was "a lot" of tension going on between Harriet and Wyn from the beginning, but when the sex scene finally came, it disappeared and felt dull.
Anyways, not everything seems bad, lmao.
I have this love/hate relationship with EH's writing style. For one side, there are some phrases where you can relate and say "Same, sis, same.", but for the other side, Emily uses metaphors and stuff like that where is no needed.
The only good thing, perhaps?
I get the hype over Emily Henry's books, I swear I do, but they never captivate me or make me giggle, kick my feet in the air or feel happy. Maybe there's something wrong with me. Maybe, like I said at the beginning of this review, maybe romance as a main is not for me.
This is where Emily Henry and I part ways.
I guess I have more things to say, but I'll add them when I remember, lmao.
July 7, 2023
I mean... if we are all going to read it....
3.5 Stars
I know, I know, but before you all come for my head, hear me out.
I have never been so conflicted by a book before. I simultaneously really loved and kind of hated this book. Let me start out by saying I think Emily Henry is an absolute poet, she is nothing short of a master at her craft and this book is probably some of her best writing so far. The pacing of this book, the alternating timelines, the character development, the relationships were all beautifully and expertly written. So, you are probably scratching your head thinking, "Beck, so what was the problem?" Well........ I just could never buy in to what this whole book is about in the first place, the break-up, let's just call it what it is, this is the miscommunication trope on STEROIDS, "Oh but it was more complicated than that" WAS IT THOUGH? And if I am being totally honest, I felt like the ending was not enough payoff for the all the emotional trauma we were all put through.
Let me start with the things I loved-
The writing- Nobody does it like EH. She is an absolute artist with her words, the way she can summon the perfect measure of every emotion into every page is stunning and so rare. I can't ignore or deny the absolute magic that this author weaves into every page.
"It feels like a moment before a car accident, when the tires have started to hydroplane and you know something terrible is likely coming, but there's still a chance the tread will find purchase and you'll never know what agony you narrowly avoided."
The chemistry- The chemistry between all her characters is so balanced and always feels authentic. The way her found family move around each other and interact with each other is so natural and genuine. And the chemistry between Wynn and Harriett was off the charts white hot! You could feel the sparks between them jumping off the page, it was palpable.
"Maybe I need to know that he remembers that he hasn't totally forgotten what it feels like to love me, while I'm trapped with him buried onto my heart, my, brain, my lungs, my skin."
Harriet- I really loved Harriet. She is entirely relatable; she is riddled with self-doubt and I appreciated her struggle to please those around her and form herself into what she thought the people she loved needed her to be while sacrificing her own wants and desires. I was thrilled for her when she finally started asserting herself and choosing her own path.
"I'm not the brilliant doctor my parents wanted me to be, and I'm not the person who could give Wyn the happiness he deserves, and I'm not the friend Sabrina and Cleo needed." 😭
Ok, what didn't work for me:
WYNN- Uh oh!! Are you all screaming at me yet? It's not what you think, I DO love Wyn, I think he is sweet and charming and vulnerable, and he absolutely loves Harriett, but the man could not muster up the strength to fight for her even ONCE this entire book!! I kept waiting for him to finally grow and fight for Harriet and it just never happens, even at the end it is HARRIET that moves first, it's always Harriett. I understand when he was struggling before but by the end he is supposed to be in a better place and it's still the same with him. How are we supposed to believe that this relationship will ever last long term, bc things will inevitably get rocky again as do all long-term relationships, but I can't believe that he will ever step up, if Harriet doesn't hold them together it will fail again. Exibit A down below!!!
"You can't follow me like I followed you. I won't be enough."
"It'll get easier, he promises hoarsely, his hand brushing my hair behind my ear. "Someday you'll hardly remember this"
See!!! He is literally drowning, and he refuses to kick!!!
The Break-Up- More than half of this book is putting us all through this absolute all-consuming agony and heartache for these two people who so obviously deeply love each other and are both completely shattered and heartbroken. The back and forth between the timelines serves to build on this epic love that spans nine years! And the whole time you are thinking, "What could have possibly happened to tear these two apart?" And then we finally get there.... and it just didn't math for me. Misunderstandings and miscommunication? A four-minute phone call? REALLY? And then just total and complete acceptance? Naaahhhh. I don't buy it. Sorry not sorry, it's just not believable for me. So, if Sabrina never orchestrated that whole wkend? Then what? They would have just been resigned? It just makes all those beautiful promises that Wyn said to her feel so empty and I think he meant them. Why didn't he come find her when he was feeling better and got clarity. Why didn't she demand an explanation that she absolutely deserved? And this is just some advice THERAPY is your friend! All of this pain could have so easily been avoided.
"I have been in love with her since we met, though,"
"No," he says quietly. "In every universe, it's you for me. Even if it's not me for you."
"If it was possible to stop loving you, I would have managed it in that first year of desperately trying to. I'm here. For good."
"Do you want me to promise that I will love you forever Harriett? Because I will."
The ending The woman is a DOCTOR, she could set up a private little practice in Montana and be home for dinner every night. Do you know how much those loans are? Pottery isn't cutting it babe sorry! This wasn't as big of a deal but it did irk me.
Ok so even though I did have my issues with this book, obviously, I still really thought it was beautiful. The writing was stunning, and I obviously cared about the story bc this review is a mile long (sorry about that) Will I ever read it again? Hmm doubt it, bc Beach Read is right there.
So current EH book rankings:
1)Beach Read
2)Book Lovers
3)Happy Place
4)PWMOV
3.5 Stars
I know, I know, but before you all come for my head, hear me out.
I have never been so conflicted by a book before. I simultaneously really loved and kind of hated this book. Let me start out by saying I think Emily Henry is an absolute poet, she is nothing short of a master at her craft and this book is probably some of her best writing so far. The pacing of this book, the alternating timelines, the character development, the relationships were all beautifully and expertly written. So, you are probably scratching your head thinking, "Beck, so what was the problem?" Well........ I just could never buy in to what this whole book is about in the first place, the break-up, let's just call it what it is, this is the miscommunication trope on STEROIDS, "Oh but it was more complicated than that" WAS IT THOUGH? And if I am being totally honest, I felt like the ending was not enough payoff for the all the emotional trauma we were all put through.
Let me start with the things I loved-
The writing- Nobody does it like EH. She is an absolute artist with her words, the way she can summon the perfect measure of every emotion into every page is stunning and so rare. I can't ignore or deny the absolute magic that this author weaves into every page.
"It feels like a moment before a car accident, when the tires have started to hydroplane and you know something terrible is likely coming, but there's still a chance the tread will find purchase and you'll never know what agony you narrowly avoided."
The chemistry- The chemistry between all her characters is so balanced and always feels authentic. The way her found family move around each other and interact with each other is so natural and genuine. And the chemistry between Wynn and Harriett was off the charts white hot! You could feel the sparks between them jumping off the page, it was palpable.
"Maybe I need to know that he remembers that he hasn't totally forgotten what it feels like to love me, while I'm trapped with him buried onto my heart, my, brain, my lungs, my skin."
Harriet- I really loved Harriet. She is entirely relatable; she is riddled with self-doubt and I appreciated her struggle to please those around her and form herself into what she thought the people she loved needed her to be while sacrificing her own wants and desires. I was thrilled for her when she finally started asserting herself and choosing her own path.
"I'm not the brilliant doctor my parents wanted me to be, and I'm not the person who could give Wyn the happiness he deserves, and I'm not the friend Sabrina and Cleo needed." 😭
Ok, what didn't work for me:
WYNN- Uh oh!! Are you all screaming at me yet? It's not what you think, I DO love Wyn, I think he is sweet and charming and vulnerable, and he absolutely loves Harriett, but the man could not muster up the strength to fight for her even ONCE this entire book!! I kept waiting for him to finally grow and fight for Harriet and it just never happens, even at the end it is HARRIET that moves first, it's always Harriett. I understand when he was struggling before but by the end he is supposed to be in a better place and it's still the same with him. How are we supposed to believe that this relationship will ever last long term, bc things will inevitably get rocky again as do all long-term relationships, but I can't believe that he will ever step up, if Harriet doesn't hold them together it will fail again. Exibit A down below!!!
"You can't follow me like I followed you. I won't be enough."
"It'll get easier, he promises hoarsely, his hand brushing my hair behind my ear. "Someday you'll hardly remember this"
See!!! He is literally drowning, and he refuses to kick!!!
The Break-Up- More than half of this book is putting us all through this absolute all-consuming agony and heartache for these two people who so obviously deeply love each other and are both completely shattered and heartbroken. The back and forth between the timelines serves to build on this epic love that spans nine years! And the whole time you are thinking, "What could have possibly happened to tear these two apart?" And then we finally get there.... and it just didn't math for me. Misunderstandings and miscommunication? A four-minute phone call? REALLY? And then just total and complete acceptance? Naaahhhh. I don't buy it. Sorry not sorry, it's just not believable for me. So, if Sabrina never orchestrated that whole wkend? Then what? They would have just been resigned? It just makes all those beautiful promises that Wyn said to her feel so empty and I think he meant them. Why didn't he come find her when he was feeling better and got clarity. Why didn't she demand an explanation that she absolutely deserved? And this is just some advice THERAPY is your friend! All of this pain could have so easily been avoided.
"I have been in love with her since we met, though,"
"No," he says quietly. "In every universe, it's you for me. Even if it's not me for you."
"If it was possible to stop loving you, I would have managed it in that first year of desperately trying to. I'm here. For good."
"Do you want me to promise that I will love you forever Harriett? Because I will."
The ending The woman is a DOCTOR, she could set up a private little practice in Montana and be home for dinner every night. Do you know how much those loans are? Pottery isn't cutting it babe sorry! This wasn't as big of a deal but it did irk me.
Ok so even though I did have my issues with this book, obviously, I still really thought it was beautiful. The writing was stunning, and I obviously cared about the story bc this review is a mile long (sorry about that) Will I ever read it again? Hmm doubt it, bc Beach Read is right there.
So current EH book rankings:
1)Beach Read
2)Book Lovers
3)Happy Place
4)PWMOV
June 2, 2023
When I die, I want Emily Henry to lower me into my grave so she can let me down one last time. 🙏🏻
And before any of you bitches bring up pwmov (IM LOOKING AT U RASA 😑🫵🏻), I have my reasons.
I considered giving this 3/5 at one point but the more I think about it the more it makes me rage. I'll have to split this into parts cause I had an issue with almost everything and anything !!! this is the last EH book I'll ever read so if u see me reading any of her new releases, ill fly out to the UK so u can beat the shit out me 🫶🏻
let's talk about names for a sec, cause WHERE DOES SHE FIND THESE NAMES?? his name is literally WYNDHAM. Wyndfuckingham. It sounded so yeehaw but it ended up being an English name 🥹. This should've been a sign for me to stop reading it *sighs* I should've known at this point that he'd be a loser. It's almost as if his parents set him up to be a failure.
Also his SISTER'S name was Michael ?? For half of the book I thought he was talking about his brother. Parth sounds like the Bengali word for fart so I couldn't take him seriously at all. (I'll have to confirm this with my parents tho).
wyn is such a pos, you can't convince me this man loved her for a single sec, they were together for almost 10 years and he broke up with her over the phone??? I'm convinced the one and only reason he stayed with her for that long was bc she stroked his tiny, tiny dick and even tinier ego. I really really really tried to like him for the first 150 pages or so BUT PICKING A SIDE TABLE MADE OUT OF SHOE BOXES (thank u for reminding me rasa) FROM THE SIDE OF THE ROAD WAS MY LAST STRAW. You're not only dumb (he failed gen ed math, whatever that means) but you also collect other people's trash? no fucking thank you.
"I've worked so fucking hard on myself these last five months, Harriet, and I'm doing well" up until this point I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, I told myself that he was probably as miserable but this was the 4th time he asked if she's happy TOO. Wdym "too" ? 😃🔪Also not him acting shady and smiling at his phone for 70% of the book and making her think he already has a girlfriend, just for the big reveal to be that he makes tables for a living 😃 YES TABLES.
This man omg, I couldn't deal with his self pity anymore, I needed him stfu for a sec. Yes Wyn, everyone voted for u to be prom king bc they felt bad for u 🥺 BRING BACK TOXIC MASCULINITY I BEG, I don't wanna read about whiny manwhores ever again. Also not his mum putting pics up of him with other girls to "promote" him when harriet came over 😭😭 even she thinks he's a loser.
Anyways has no one noticed how he distanced himself from her after he met martin? the one time she didn't coddle him when ppl were making him feel insecure? He was clearly waiting for a way out. ALSO, SHE SAID SHE SLEPT WITH SOMEONE AND HE DIDN'T GET JEALOUS or react in any other way ???? His response was "Look at me, I am yours", more like "i am yours to coddle🥺". I'll stop here even tho I could write a book with all the reasons why I hate this man <3
harriet or should I say harry 😃 Harriet *deep sigh* I was rooting for u girl, we were all rooting for u. I tried not to think of her as a doormat even tho she clearly was one bc she was about to become a freaking NEUROSURGEON ! Ofc she had to ruin everything and turn me against her. I didnt buy it for a sec that she hated her job and wanted to quit, I'm 99.9% sure that the pos made her feel insecure for having a better job than him🙄 I refuse REFUSE to believe that she quit her job after 10+ of studying b-because she wanted to pursue pottery? POTTERY? she's not even good at it AND SHE KNOWS IT 🥹 "I withdrew. But I'm going to pay back the rest of the loan myself."
HOW HARRIET? HOW EXACTLY WILL YOU PAY BACK +200K OF STUDENT LOANS (with interest btw) EARNING 20K A YEAR 🧍🏻♀️pls tell me so I can quit uni too. Honestly, all she needed was therapy and a pet. I had so many good things to say about her at the start but it all got cancelled out by her stupidity. And let's not talk about how wyn flat out told her to not move to Montana for him but she still did 🤣
side characters
I was gonna write about each character individually but I'm already sick of it. Her friends were so one dimensional. I knew I'd hate Sabrina from the start, tbf I expected her to announce there'll be a double wedding 😭 so her going behind their backs didn't faze me at all. Her friends’ side story could've been 20 pages long (max) if they just had one single conversation? Like farm girl tell your friends you're pregnant and Sabrina tell them you miss them? what was all that nonsense *rolling my eyes* Side note, parth was such a bad boyfriend. He was with sabrina for 10 years or whatever but got annoyed at her for reacting the way she did and didn't think of finding her after she was gone for the whole day? AND her friends had to tell him what to do. What did I expect from someone named Parth anyways 😃
Things this book has ruined for me:
1) My sanity
2) Social media, cause tell me why I thought of wyn the second I saw someone selling their tables on tinder??
3) people 😭 I saw a woman rowing a boat for a man while he was sunbathing and thought "harriet behaviour"
-----------------------------------------------------
I’m too lazy to write a review rn 🧍🏻♀️ but just know it’s worse than you think it is <3
I slept on it but I still can’t process everything that happened 😭 I have so much to say 😩
What a shit show 🥱 I don’t even know what to rate it
Hate rea- I mean buddy reading 🥺💗 (I just know I’m gonna hate it if it’s anything like beach read🤞🏻)
And before any of you bitches bring up pwmov (IM LOOKING AT U RASA 😑🫵🏻), I have my reasons.
I considered giving this 3/5 at one point but the more I think about it the more it makes me rage. I'll have to split this into parts cause I had an issue with almost everything and anything !!! this is the last EH book I'll ever read so if u see me reading any of her new releases, ill fly out to the UK so u can beat the shit out me 🫶🏻
let's talk about names for a sec, cause WHERE DOES SHE FIND THESE NAMES?? his name is literally WYNDHAM. Wyndfuckingham. It sounded so yeehaw but it ended up being an English name 🥹. This should've been a sign for me to stop reading it *sighs* I should've known at this point that he'd be a loser. It's almost as if his parents set him up to be a failure.
Also his SISTER'S name was Michael ?? For half of the book I thought he was talking about his brother. Parth sounds like the Bengali word for fart so I couldn't take him seriously at all. (I'll have to confirm this with my parents tho).
wyn is such a pos, you can't convince me this man loved her for a single sec, they were together for almost 10 years and he broke up with her over the phone??? I'm convinced the one and only reason he stayed with her for that long was bc she stroked his tiny, tiny dick and even tinier ego. I really really really tried to like him for the first 150 pages or so BUT PICKING A SIDE TABLE MADE OUT OF SHOE BOXES (thank u for reminding me rasa) FROM THE SIDE OF THE ROAD WAS MY LAST STRAW. You're not only dumb (he failed gen ed math, whatever that means) but you also collect other people's trash? no fucking thank you.
"I've worked so fucking hard on myself these last five months, Harriet, and I'm doing well" up until this point I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, I told myself that he was probably as miserable but this was the 4th time he asked if she's happy TOO. Wdym "too" ? 😃🔪Also not him acting shady and smiling at his phone for 70% of the book and making her think he already has a girlfriend, just for the big reveal to be that he makes tables for a living 😃 YES TABLES.
This man omg, I couldn't deal with his self pity anymore, I needed him stfu for a sec. Yes Wyn, everyone voted for u to be prom king bc they felt bad for u 🥺 BRING BACK TOXIC MASCULINITY I BEG, I don't wanna read about whiny manwhores ever again. Also not his mum putting pics up of him with other girls to "promote" him when harriet came over 😭😭 even she thinks he's a loser.
Anyways has no one noticed how he distanced himself from her after he met martin? the one time she didn't coddle him when ppl were making him feel insecure? He was clearly waiting for a way out. ALSO, SHE SAID SHE SLEPT WITH SOMEONE AND HE DIDN'T GET JEALOUS or react in any other way ???? His response was "Look at me, I am yours", more like "i am yours to coddle🥺". I'll stop here even tho I could write a book with all the reasons why I hate this man <3
harriet or should I say harry 😃 Harriet *deep sigh* I was rooting for u girl, we were all rooting for u. I tried not to think of her as a doormat even tho she clearly was one bc she was about to become a freaking NEUROSURGEON ! Ofc she had to ruin everything and turn me against her. I didnt buy it for a sec that she hated her job and wanted to quit, I'm 99.9% sure that the pos made her feel insecure for having a better job than him🙄 I refuse REFUSE to believe that she quit her job after 10+ of studying b-because she wanted to pursue pottery? POTTERY? she's not even good at it AND SHE KNOWS IT 🥹 "I withdrew. But I'm going to pay back the rest of the loan myself."
HOW HARRIET? HOW EXACTLY WILL YOU PAY BACK +200K OF STUDENT LOANS (with interest btw) EARNING 20K A YEAR 🧍🏻♀️pls tell me so I can quit uni too. Honestly, all she needed was therapy and a pet. I had so many good things to say about her at the start but it all got cancelled out by her stupidity. And let's not talk about how wyn flat out told her to not move to Montana for him but she still did 🤣
side characters
I was gonna write about each character individually but I'm already sick of it. Her friends were so one dimensional. I knew I'd hate Sabrina from the start, tbf I expected her to announce there'll be a double wedding 😭 so her going behind their backs didn't faze me at all. Her friends’ side story could've been 20 pages long (max) if they just had one single conversation? Like farm girl tell your friends you're pregnant and Sabrina tell them you miss them? what was all that nonsense *rolling my eyes* Side note, parth was such a bad boyfriend. He was with sabrina for 10 years or whatever but got annoyed at her for reacting the way she did and didn't think of finding her after she was gone for the whole day? AND her friends had to tell him what to do. What did I expect from someone named Parth anyways 😃
Things this book has ruined for me:
1) My sanity
2) Social media, cause tell me why I thought of wyn the second I saw someone selling their tables on tinder??
3) people 😭 I saw a woman rowing a boat for a man while he was sunbathing and thought "harriet behaviour"
-----------------------------------------------------
I’m too lazy to write a review rn 🧍🏻♀️ but just know it’s worse than you think it is <3
I slept on it but I still can’t process everything that happened 😭 I have so much to say 😩
What a shit show 🥱 I don’t even know what to rate it
Hate rea- I mean buddy reading 🥺💗 (I just know I’m gonna hate it if it’s anything like beach read🤞🏻)
March 13, 2024
the bridge of the archer: “they see right through me, can you see right through me? i see right through me”, encapsulates this book perfectly.
the loneliness; the bargaining with the universe; being loved and loving people; the fear of growing up; the fear of the possibility of never being happy; the perpetual struggle between living for yourself and the people you love; the terror of being an unhappy place to the people who love you; the fear of a job or something so permanent in your life being the wrong choice; everything around you changing; the nostalgia for moments you can never get back.
harriet and i mirror each other in so many ways, and reading it in words across a book made me feel so seen and comforted.
this book is for the girls who worry and worry, worry if they’re good enough, worry if they’ve achieved enough, worry if they’re enough. worry if they love people too much, worry if they love people too little. worry if they’re a catalyst for something bad that happens. worry if they’re too temporary or maybe too permanent. who have nostalgic happy moments on a loop in their heads. who feel the loneliness more with people around them than when they’re alone.
⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻
this part contains spoilers
preface: i rated this book on a completely different scale from emily henry’s other books or romance books in general. the reason why i loved this book so much, was not the romance but harriet’s introspection and character. its tones were much more subtle and nuanced, much reminiscent of a lit fic in some parts.
harriet and i are vastly different in personality. she is much more outgoing, warmer, and patient than i am. but our fears and anxieties clicked, which emily henry did such an excellent job of writing about. especially her description of loneliness—i think it might be my favorite part she's written.
wyn was an interesting character to me because he seemed so unlike other male protagonists. he feels like alex in a way, but the way his emotions and thoughts are wired is different. weirdly, i still don’t believe that he and harriet fully understand the reason that they broke up or they didn’t work out. they talked about their feelings, but did they truly hear one another? or did their worst fears get in the way of truly unpacking it and instead just tried to bandage it up as quickly as possible to appease one another?
wyn’s constant need to feel loved or feel like he matters, and harriet’s constant fear that she will make people around her unhappy—i feel like it will eventually crash and burn again. wyn’s dad dying was a sort of superficial wound because it was an external circumstance/dent in their relationship. harriet quitting her job (although she was unhappy) also feels like a bit of an over-correction and a bandaid to the true problem.
but i disregarded almost all of that during my read because of how much they love each other. it’s the first romance book i read where i could palpably feel how much and how desperately they love each other—not in an angsty or sexual way, but just how overwhelmingly they care about each other. and how intrinsically they understand each other (up until the aforementioned part). and also how they try their best to show that love in the way they think the other wants. the way wyn, in flashbacks, always reassures harriet that he will always love her. the way harriet represses all of her immense guilt so she can be the strong one for wyn. small gestures throughout the book that they are always trying to read and understand the other.
that made this a very magical read, in a way.
⸻��⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻
this was literally AMAZING.
i’ll be rereading again & writing a full review in a bit but all you have to know is that this has book lovers’ banter and beach read’s introspection. not so much a huge rom com like her other books but it’s much more mature and melancholy and UGH there are some passages i teared up at.
5/5 for the moment <3
thank you berkley for the arc!!
⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻
pre-read
EMILY HENRY I WILL HIBERNATE UNTIL APRIL FOR YOU REALLY I SWEAR IT'S NO PROBLEM DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT
the loneliness; the bargaining with the universe; being loved and loving people; the fear of growing up; the fear of the possibility of never being happy; the perpetual struggle between living for yourself and the people you love; the terror of being an unhappy place to the people who love you; the fear of a job or something so permanent in your life being the wrong choice; everything around you changing; the nostalgia for moments you can never get back.
harriet and i mirror each other in so many ways, and reading it in words across a book made me feel so seen and comforted.
this book is for the girls who worry and worry, worry if they’re good enough, worry if they’ve achieved enough, worry if they’re enough. worry if they love people too much, worry if they love people too little. worry if they’re a catalyst for something bad that happens. worry if they’re too temporary or maybe too permanent. who have nostalgic happy moments on a loop in their heads. who feel the loneliness more with people around them than when they’re alone.
⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻
this part contains spoilers
“stupid, stupid, stupid heart. don’t you know he hasn't been yours to cry over for a long time?”
“it’s this feeling like the universe is compacting around me while something in my rib cage is expanding. i’m the culmination of their lost dreams, their missed other lives, and at the same time, they’re proud of me.”
“i sit on the edge of the bed, feeling the loneliness swell, not knowing whether it's pressing against me from the outside or growing from within. either way, it's inescapable, my oldest companion.”
preface: i rated this book on a completely different scale from emily henry’s other books or romance books in general. the reason why i loved this book so much, was not the romance but harriet’s introspection and character. its tones were much more subtle and nuanced, much reminiscent of a lit fic in some parts.
harriet and i are vastly different in personality. she is much more outgoing, warmer, and patient than i am. but our fears and anxieties clicked, which emily henry did such an excellent job of writing about. especially her description of loneliness—i think it might be my favorite part she's written.
wyn was an interesting character to me because he seemed so unlike other male protagonists. he feels like alex in a way, but the way his emotions and thoughts are wired is different. weirdly, i still don’t believe that he and harriet fully understand the reason that they broke up or they didn’t work out. they talked about their feelings, but did they truly hear one another? or did their worst fears get in the way of truly unpacking it and instead just tried to bandage it up as quickly as possible to appease one another?
wyn’s constant need to feel loved or feel like he matters, and harriet’s constant fear that she will make people around her unhappy—i feel like it will eventually crash and burn again. wyn’s dad dying was a sort of superficial wound because it was an external circumstance/dent in their relationship. harriet quitting her job (although she was unhappy) also feels like a bit of an over-correction and a bandaid to the true problem.
but i disregarded almost all of that during my read because of how much they love each other. it’s the first romance book i read where i could palpably feel how much and how desperately they love each other—not in an angsty or sexual way, but just how overwhelmingly they care about each other. and how intrinsically they understand each other (up until the aforementioned part). and also how they try their best to show that love in the way they think the other wants. the way wyn, in flashbacks, always reassures harriet that he will always love her. the way harriet represses all of her immense guilt so she can be the strong one for wyn. small gestures throughout the book that they are always trying to read and understand the other.
that made this a very magical read, in a way.
⸻��⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻
this was literally AMAZING.
i’ll be rereading again & writing a full review in a bit but all you have to know is that this has book lovers’ banter and beach read’s introspection. not so much a huge rom com like her other books but it’s much more mature and melancholy and UGH there are some passages i teared up at.
5/5 for the moment <3
thank you berkley for the arc!!
⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻
pre-read
EMILY HENRY I WILL HIBERNATE UNTIL APRIL FOR YOU REALLY I SWEAR IT'S NO PROBLEM DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT
May 21, 2024
when this book was first announced — before it had a title, or a cover, or a synopsis, or anything other than a weird beige placeholder and the words BY EMILY HENRY stamped on it — i made a solemn vow.
that vow was this:
i would trade my firstborn to read this book. i'll locate a baby just to exchange it for this.
after i read it twice, i declared it worth it.
after the third read, i have good news and i have bad news.
the bad news is this might be my least favorite emily henry book.
but the good news is that having a least favorite emily henry book is like having a bad slice of pizza, or seeing a just-okay movie in theaters with a big bucket of popcorn and a slushie the size of your head. in other words, even the disappointing experiences are better than most things in this earthly plane.
emily henry books are always trying to balance a series of incredible things: a consuming romance; a bantery cast of characters; a charming setting; and an extremely daunting character arc that usually encapsulates a deep dark secret, a fatal flaw, daddy and/or mommy issues, and a shifting career path.
this had all of those, like the creation from god it was. (tough way to reveal i'm starting an emily henry-based house of worship.) it just didn't nail the balance. or the happily ever after.
we have a cast of four friends who suck up all the character awesomeness quota, leaving none for our two main characters. we have a very soul-sucking (i'm using the word suck too much for a book that is good) career / parent / self-esteem drama subplot that becomes the whole plot, leaving very little joy or yearning for the love story we may have thought we were in for.
it also leaves some moments of frustration. how could these two people who love each other so much they need no other relationships or dreams or pastimes fail so hard to communicate? like as in never even consider it, let alone try it? how could pottery be a career path when its whole plot-based purpose is that its career-less-ness is what makes it nice? how many times can we have a patch of dialogue that culminates in one millennial joke before a scene change, leaving you like wait, that's it, we're just going to pretend the word "kardashian" is funny like this is a youtube video from 2013?
most emily henry books give you a concerningly relatable protagonist (like, show-up-to-therapy-with-a-romance-novel-a-diagnosis-suggestion-and-a-dream level relatable), a hot love interest, their gooey steamy romance, and a dream job for your girl. it gives you, in other words, a fictional person you can see yourself in and the ability to believe that she-slash-you can have it all.
this one doesn't quite get there.
we still have more good things in between than most books can aspire to — maine! friendship! jokes! — but if you, say, decide to read this in a not at all ill advisedcry for help emily henry binge reread, you're going to come away noticing this doesn't have the same magic as the others.
but it is still a slice of pizza.
bottom line: oops.
3.5
---------------------
reread update
emily henry books are a precious and nonrenewable resource, to me.
that's why i'm rereading all of them like a test before i can read the new one.
---------------------
original review
that vow was this:
i would trade my firstborn to read this book. i'll locate a baby just to exchange it for this.
after i read it twice, i declared it worth it.
after the third read, i have good news and i have bad news.
the bad news is this might be my least favorite emily henry book.
but the good news is that having a least favorite emily henry book is like having a bad slice of pizza, or seeing a just-okay movie in theaters with a big bucket of popcorn and a slushie the size of your head. in other words, even the disappointing experiences are better than most things in this earthly plane.
emily henry books are always trying to balance a series of incredible things: a consuming romance; a bantery cast of characters; a charming setting; and an extremely daunting character arc that usually encapsulates a deep dark secret, a fatal flaw, daddy and/or mommy issues, and a shifting career path.
this had all of those, like the creation from god it was. (tough way to reveal i'm starting an emily henry-based house of worship.) it just didn't nail the balance. or the happily ever after.
we have a cast of four friends who suck up all the character awesomeness quota, leaving none for our two main characters. we have a very soul-sucking (i'm using the word suck too much for a book that is good) career / parent / self-esteem drama subplot that becomes the whole plot, leaving very little joy or yearning for the love story we may have thought we were in for.
it also leaves some moments of frustration. how could these two people who love each other so much they need no other relationships or dreams or pastimes fail so hard to communicate? like as in never even consider it, let alone try it? how could pottery be a career path when its whole plot-based purpose is that its career-less-ness is what makes it nice? how many times can we have a patch of dialogue that culminates in one millennial joke before a scene change, leaving you like wait, that's it, we're just going to pretend the word "kardashian" is funny like this is a youtube video from 2013?
most emily henry books give you a concerningly relatable protagonist (like, show-up-to-therapy-with-a-romance-novel-a-diagnosis-suggestion-and-a-dream level relatable), a hot love interest, their gooey steamy romance, and a dream job for your girl. it gives you, in other words, a fictional person you can see yourself in and the ability to believe that she-slash-you can have it all.
this one doesn't quite get there.
we still have more good things in between than most books can aspire to — maine! friendship! jokes! — but if you, say, decide to read this in a not at all ill advised
but it is still a slice of pizza.
bottom line: oops.
3.5
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reread update
emily henry books are a precious and nonrenewable resource, to me.
that's why i'm rereading all of them like a test before i can read the new one.
---------------------
original review
August 1, 2023
— 4.5 stars ✰
“before i even see him, my heart starts
singing its favorite song. you, you, you.”
who is stupid enough to think it‘s a happy fluffy book just because the book is called happy place? yeah, jokes on me, i‘m in fact stupid enough. soul crushing, heart wrenching, tear jerking, i am unwell
there is nothing more heart wrenching than flashback pov‘s 😭 you‘re telling me i have to read about them falling in love just to be heart broken in the present scenes.. the audacity emily henry has. their meet cute was indeed very cute and i knew from that moment on, that my heart is going to BREAK 🥲
“do i make you anxious?”
um yes, wyn. you do make me anxious.
i knew what was gonna come, i knew it. but nothing could've prepared me for the pain. reading about their breakup is some different kind of paini never want to experience ever again.
forced proximity, second chance, fake dating.. full of tension and angst. there’s just something about past lovers that makes me so anxious but like in a good way you know.
“he reaches over my shoulder and shuts the door himself. his hand stays there, to the left of my head.”
— this is my last straw. EH broke me, i need someone to fix my shattered heart. how am i ever supposed to move on from wyn and harriet 🥲 i want their love, i want their respect, i want their passion. i want everything they have. laying in bed wide awake reading the book when i was supposed to go be bed hours ago.. now, do i love or hate that feeling? i certainly wasn't able to put the book down because it was so emotional and i needed closure.
second chance romances are one of my favorite tropes. it gives me all the angst and pain that i need for a book. i’m usually not a fan of flashback pov’s but EH just knew how to do it right, and this feeling of getting closer & closer to the chapter where they’re actually breaking up.. kill me right now. the miscommunication is a big part of this book, which i’m usually not a fan of, but somehow it didn’t bothered me this much here since i was actually able to understand why they acted that way. it was so realistic and this scares the shit out of me.
wyn’s and harriet’s love for each other runs so deep and i just connected with them instantly. i felt everything they felt, making me want to jump into the book to just hug them. and the fact that wyn’s love language is physical touch adds even more to the tension >>>
harriet making bargains with the universe was so fucking relatable. like you think you can promise the universe something and prevent the inevitable but of course you can’t. you can’t, and then you feel helpless and just ugh. i could feel both their heartbreak on my tongue and no matter what harriet did, she felt him slipping away and that was the most painful thing to ever read about.
“i might always be a little bit in love with wyn connor.”
this book isn’t for people who only want to read about romance, it’s also mostly about friendship and i thought it was such a beautiful aspect in this book. i see myself a lot in those characters, being scared that my friend group will fall apart since everyone is building their own life, going their own way, moving to another city. it is important to understand that not everything will stay the same, that we won’t love the same things we did a couple of years ago and that it’s okay to change. and i think EH did a wonderful job to represent that.
“in every universe, it’s you for me.
even if it’s not me for you.”
—
rtc i need to recover first 🤧
—
update: bye not me thinking this was gonna be a fluff romance, i think my heart will shatter lol
buddy reading with lilyya, rae and vio💗
“before i even see him, my heart starts
singing its favorite song. you, you, you.”
who is stupid enough to think it‘s a happy fluffy book just because the book is called happy place? yeah, jokes on me, i‘m in fact stupid enough. soul crushing, heart wrenching, tear jerking, i am unwell
there is nothing more heart wrenching than flashback pov‘s 😭 you‘re telling me i have to read about them falling in love just to be heart broken in the present scenes.. the audacity emily henry has. their meet cute was indeed very cute and i knew from that moment on, that my heart is going to BREAK 🥲
“do i make you anxious?”
um yes, wyn. you do make me anxious.
i knew what was gonna come, i knew it. but nothing could've prepared me for the pain. reading about their breakup is some different kind of pain
forced proximity, second chance, fake dating.. full of tension and angst. there’s just something about past lovers that makes me so anxious but like in a good way you know.
“he reaches over my shoulder and shuts the door himself. his hand stays there, to the left of my head.”
— this is my last straw. EH broke me, i need someone to fix my shattered heart. how am i ever supposed to move on from wyn and harriet 🥲 i want their love, i want their respect, i want their passion. i want everything they have. laying in bed wide awake reading the book when i was supposed to go be bed hours ago.. now, do i love or hate that feeling? i certainly wasn't able to put the book down because it was so emotional and i needed closure.
second chance romances are one of my favorite tropes. it gives me all the angst and pain that i need for a book. i’m usually not a fan of flashback pov’s but EH just knew how to do it right, and this feeling of getting closer & closer to the chapter where they’re actually breaking up.. kill me right now. the miscommunication is a big part of this book, which i’m usually not a fan of, but somehow it didn’t bothered me this much here since i was actually able to understand why they acted that way. it was so realistic and this scares the shit out of me.
wyn’s and harriet’s love for each other runs so deep and i just connected with them instantly. i felt everything they felt, making me want to jump into the book to just hug them. and the fact that wyn’s love language is physical touch adds even more to the tension >>>
harriet making bargains with the universe was so fucking relatable. like you think you can promise the universe something and prevent the inevitable but of course you can’t. you can’t, and then you feel helpless and just ugh. i could feel both their heartbreak on my tongue and no matter what harriet did, she felt him slipping away and that was the most painful thing to ever read about.
“i might always be a little bit in love with wyn connor.”
this book isn’t for people who only want to read about romance, it’s also mostly about friendship and i thought it was such a beautiful aspect in this book. i see myself a lot in those characters, being scared that my friend group will fall apart since everyone is building their own life, going their own way, moving to another city. it is important to understand that not everything will stay the same, that we won’t love the same things we did a couple of years ago and that it’s okay to change. and i think EH did a wonderful job to represent that.
“in every universe, it’s you for me.
even if it’s not me for you.”
—
rtc i need to recover first 🤧
—
update: bye not me thinking this was gonna be a fluff romance, i think my heart will shatter lol
buddy reading with lilyya, rae and vio💗
April 28, 2024
Each year, Emily Henry releases a fantastic novel and I always give my vote for her in the best romance category at Goodreads Choice Awards. In my opinion, nobody can compete with her because she creates the best of the best. She not only plays the strings of my heart but is also a soul whisperer by writing the most unforgettable love stories.
After reading this fantastic angsty romance/self-growth/beautiful friendship story, I decided it is my second favorite book by EH. "Book Lovers" is still my all-time favorite novel!
I have to admit that this book is the sexiest, steamiest novel the author has written. The main reason is that the couple in the story has already known each other for ten years, and even though they broke up, the flame is still there. They are obviously soulmates! But what happened between Harriet and Wyn? They dated for nearly a decade, staying as fiancées for eight years. Why did Wyn end things with a four-minute-long phone call? Was it only long distance, did one of them cheat, or is there any crucial, life-changing reason that tore them apart?
Harriet is invited to her Happy Place, where she has spent her most meaningful, unforgettable, sentimental moments with her best friends Sabrina, a hotshot lawyer, and Cleo, an aspiring farmer. Sabrina started dating their long-time friend and party boy Parth, and Cleo is happily farming and dating her hyperactive, extrovert lover Kimmie. Normally, their group turns into a party of five!
Even though Harriet broke up with Wyn five months ago, they didn't come clean with their friends. Harriet is adamant about telling them at their special union in Happy Place, but she realizes that Sabrina already invited Wyn to their cottage, and Wyn acts like they're still together.
Harriet finds out that Sabrina's father will sell Happy Place, and that this will be their last time together. An era of their lives is about to end. She also gives other shocking news. Harriet is a person who doesn't know how to fight, hates conflicts, and tries to please everyone around her. She doesn't want to create a disturbance by announcing their break-up, and Wyn seems to be on the same page.
They should act like a couple for a week, and they will eventually come clean when their holiday is over. How hard could it be to stay in the same room, touching and kissing your ex in front of others when you are still harboring your unresolved feelings?
Overall, this is an inspirational novel about self-growth, friendship, growing up, changing, grief, and mental illness. I returned to read some chapters over and over again. Harriet and Wyn might be my favorite couple that EH has created.
Millions of thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing for sharing 2023's most anticipated book's digital copy with me in exchange for my honest review!
If you’re interested in reading my extended book reviews, movie critiques, and hilarious astrology articles, be sure to check out my Medium account using the link below:
medium.com
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After reading this fantastic angsty romance/self-growth/beautiful friendship story, I decided it is my second favorite book by EH. "Book Lovers" is still my all-time favorite novel!
I have to admit that this book is the sexiest, steamiest novel the author has written. The main reason is that the couple in the story has already known each other for ten years, and even though they broke up, the flame is still there. They are obviously soulmates! But what happened between Harriet and Wyn? They dated for nearly a decade, staying as fiancées for eight years. Why did Wyn end things with a four-minute-long phone call? Was it only long distance, did one of them cheat, or is there any crucial, life-changing reason that tore them apart?
Harriet is invited to her Happy Place, where she has spent her most meaningful, unforgettable, sentimental moments with her best friends Sabrina, a hotshot lawyer, and Cleo, an aspiring farmer. Sabrina started dating their long-time friend and party boy Parth, and Cleo is happily farming and dating her hyperactive, extrovert lover Kimmie. Normally, their group turns into a party of five!
Even though Harriet broke up with Wyn five months ago, they didn't come clean with their friends. Harriet is adamant about telling them at their special union in Happy Place, but she realizes that Sabrina already invited Wyn to their cottage, and Wyn acts like they're still together.
Harriet finds out that Sabrina's father will sell Happy Place, and that this will be their last time together. An era of their lives is about to end. She also gives other shocking news. Harriet is a person who doesn't know how to fight, hates conflicts, and tries to please everyone around her. She doesn't want to create a disturbance by announcing their break-up, and Wyn seems to be on the same page.
They should act like a couple for a week, and they will eventually come clean when their holiday is over. How hard could it be to stay in the same room, touching and kissing your ex in front of others when you are still harboring your unresolved feelings?
Overall, this is an inspirational novel about self-growth, friendship, growing up, changing, grief, and mental illness. I returned to read some chapters over and over again. Harriet and Wyn might be my favorite couple that EH has created.
Millions of thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing for sharing 2023's most anticipated book's digital copy with me in exchange for my honest review!
If you’re interested in reading my extended book reviews, movie critiques, and hilarious astrology articles, be sure to check out my Medium account using the link below:
medium.com
April 17, 2023
i feel like me and this book are somehow cosmically intertwined and our souls are one. this book was so taylor swift’s lover, folklore, midnights coded, tell me i’m wrong ?!
there’s this unique connection i get from emily henry’s writing style that at this point should be studied. the way she not only describes feelings but gives me this ache that’s so deep and penetrating. it’s so tender omfg
through out book we are consistently jumping from past to present timelines. and usually flashbacks bore me to no hell but not these. in fact, at some points i was rather craving the flashbacks more than the present moments.
harriet and wyn are such unique characters compared to emily’s other characters. a lot of it is the same i can’t lie, but still, i get attached to them like glue. they feel so deeply and love so intensely. even though this entire book is all in harriet’s pov you still get a full characterization of wyn. and not only that. the side characters, this found family. all these characters have so much personality and depth. ugh i’d take a bullet for all of them fr.
harriet is so me coded “he’s a golden boy. i’m a girl whose life has been drawn in shades of gray.” GORL IM CRYING
and wyn omg this sweetheart !! his kindness and selflessness is so precious and infectious. “i will always love you, that’s the point, harriet. it’s the only thing that’s ever come naturally to me.” GAHHHD i need him !!
and as always emily henry books are gonna hit a little harder, linger a little closer, and stay a little longer than any other romance book. 1 star off only because i was semi bored in the middle and it felt a little flat in some parts. and the ending was so fucking rushed. i wished it gradually ended. nonetheless i still really enjoyed this book and highly recommend :)
emily henry book rankings (this always changes, although beach read will most likely always stay #1)
beach read, pwmov, book lovers, happy place
women: nora, january, harriet, poppy
men: gus, alex, charlie, wyn
thanks berkeley for the arc
there’s this unique connection i get from emily henry’s writing style that at this point should be studied. the way she not only describes feelings but gives me this ache that’s so deep and penetrating. it’s so tender omfg
through out book we are consistently jumping from past to present timelines. and usually flashbacks bore me to no hell but not these. in fact, at some points i was rather craving the flashbacks more than the present moments.
harriet and wyn are such unique characters compared to emily’s other characters. a lot of it is the same i can’t lie, but still, i get attached to them like glue. they feel so deeply and love so intensely. even though this entire book is all in harriet’s pov you still get a full characterization of wyn. and not only that. the side characters, this found family. all these characters have so much personality and depth. ugh i’d take a bullet for all of them fr.
harriet is so me coded “he’s a golden boy. i’m a girl whose life has been drawn in shades of gray.” GORL IM CRYING
and wyn omg this sweetheart !! his kindness and selflessness is so precious and infectious. “i will always love you, that’s the point, harriet. it’s the only thing that’s ever come naturally to me.” GAHHHD i need him !!
and as always emily henry books are gonna hit a little harder, linger a little closer, and stay a little longer than any other romance book. 1 star off only because i was semi bored in the middle and it felt a little flat in some parts. and the ending was so fucking rushed. i wished it gradually ended. nonetheless i still really enjoyed this book and highly recommend :)
emily henry book rankings (this always changes, although beach read will most likely always stay #1)
beach read, pwmov, book lovers, happy place
women: nora, january, harriet, poppy
men: gus, alex, charlie, wyn
thanks berkeley for the arc
July 22, 2023
unpopular opinion incoming
first, let me say i am very happy that so many people love this book already. i love that for you, i really do!✨
i enjoyed and liked this book, but i didn’t love it… and believe me, i tried.
maybe my emotions are broken.
maybe i really disliked the miscommunication.
maybe the entire friend groupslightly annoyed me.
maybe the writing felt pretty average.
maybe i went in with my expectations way too high.
first, let me say i am very happy that so many people love this book already. i love that for you, i really do!✨
i enjoyed and liked this book, but i didn’t love it… and believe me, i tried.
maybe my emotions are broken.
maybe i really disliked the miscommunication.
maybe the entire friend group
maybe the writing felt pretty average.
maybe i went in with my expectations way too high.
Read
May 15, 2023Wyn and Harriet are the perfect couple. But unbeknownst to their best friends, they broke up months ago. When their annual group trip to Maine comes up, Wyn and Harriet find themselves pretending to still be together. Will they be able to fake it in front of those who know them best? Another knockout from Emily.
May 13, 2023
Even though I'm not a romance reader, I really liked Book Lovers and Beach Read because the characters were emotionally mature and the plot didn't rely on miscommunication...
This book is the opposite. I still love her banter but didn't care for the rest.
Not her best...
This book is the opposite. I still love her banter but didn't care for the rest.
Not her best...
April 12, 2024
bro, no offense, but this book actually made me glad I was single lol
May 22, 2023
i agree that this book is taylor swift coded
as in me and emily henry books are never ever ever getting back together 🥲
as in me and emily henry books are never ever ever getting back together 🥲
February 3, 2024
if we’re being real here, i finished this like a week ago, i’ve just been unable to articulate the extreme LOVE i feel for it.
August 13, 2023
emily henry wrote this for the right where you left me/champagne problems/the archer girlies (me) and she will be receiving my therapy bill
May 16, 2023
emily henry is behind my impossible romantic standards it’s true!
my full review is up on my blog
my full review is up on my blog
May 2, 2023
Miss Henry, can you explain how shawty is going to pay those loans off??
January 23, 2024
How does one write a five star review for Happy Place & hold back on unleashing a full on gush fest?
I'm obsessed with this book. I could not help but find myself so invested in the relationship. It's broken & flawed, but I was rooting for them the whole time to find their way back to each other. Sort things out. Figure it out. MY HEART.
The friendship group was so fun to follow and seeing how they supported each other was BEAUTIFUL. They all bring their flaws to the table without the fear of being judged, because they have trust that everyone will accept them regardless. That doesn't mean they're perfect, but they put in the work to keep their friendships in a solid place.
I loved it. I loved it. I loved it.
All the stars.
ALL OF THEM.
HAVE THEM ALL.
I'm obsessed with this book. I could not help but find myself so invested in the relationship. It's broken & flawed, but I was rooting for them the whole time to find their way back to each other. Sort things out. Figure it out. MY HEART.
The friendship group was so fun to follow and seeing how they supported each other was BEAUTIFUL. They all bring their flaws to the table without the fear of being judged, because they have trust that everyone will accept them regardless. That doesn't mean they're perfect, but they put in the work to keep their friendships in a solid place.
I loved it. I loved it. I loved it.
All the stars.
ALL OF THEM.
HAVE THEM ALL.
June 1, 2023
I think I can officially say Emily Henry is my favorite author. This wasn't my number one favorite Emily Henry book (hello Beach Read & Book Lovers), but I still REALLY liked it. The friendships, the heartbreak, and how Emily Henry perfectly encapsulates that bitter-sweet feeling of growing up made my heart hurt.
The only reason it's 4 stars and not 5 is that it did take me a bit to get into the romance plotline (not knowing the breakup reason for so long frustrated me), and I felt the pacing could be a bit quicker in the middle, but I LOVED the last 100 pages so so so much. As someone who graduated college a few years ago, has felt the sadness of friends moving away and drifting apart, and looked back on my own happy place moments that feel too far in the past, this book HIT.
The only reason it's 4 stars and not 5 is that it did take me a bit to get into the romance plotline (not knowing the breakup reason for so long frustrated me), and I felt the pacing could be a bit quicker in the middle, but I LOVED the last 100 pages so so so much. As someone who graduated college a few years ago, has felt the sadness of friends moving away and drifting apart, and looked back on my own happy place moments that feel too far in the past, this book HIT.
January 15, 2024
2.5/5 stars.
br with alayla!!
and as alayla would say: sigh.
(if you want to read what alayla actually said (you do), it's right here: sigh.)
there are a lot of things i didn’t like about this. my favorite part, to be honest, was emily’s writing. i love her prose and style and her banter is TO DIE FOR. it will always feel like a warm hug from someone you know and haven’t seen in a while and i’m never not going to love it.
butttttt that’s pretty much where it ends.(lies there is more that i like at the end)
“what didn’t i like,” i heard nobody ask?
well, since you asked…
harriet. don’t get me wrong, i liked her occasionally. i even related to her occasionally. but it was 400 pages long and when she’s being annoying for 350 of them, “occasionally” doesn’t cut it.
maybe my biggest problem with all of it was concerning her: SHES SO HORNY OH MY GOD. why is nobody talking about this 😭 i swear to god every single chapter was her being horny and wanting to literally jump wyn and thinking about jumping wyn and fantasizing about jumping wyn and IT GOT SO OLD HOLY SHIT. there was no tension between them because there wasn’t room after all the lust.
and because of this- i didn’t feel the broken love i’m meant to. i was meant to feel all sad and whatever but i didn’t feel whatever loving and amazing relationship they used to have BECAUSE HER INTERNAL MONOLOGUE WAS SOLELY WANTING TO FUCK HIM.
i love a slut era as much as the next person but there’s a reason a slut era isn’t about finding love-
my eyes were rolling. if that old wives tale about the wind is true, i’d be so blind rn i wouldn’t have been able to finish reading the book.
and because of this, when they finally did have sex, i couldn’t have cared less. there was no tension. i was falling asleep because i felt like i’ve already read this 100000000 times in harry’s internal monologue.
also all the shit with her being dramatic and assuming shit and whatnot made me want to smash my head into a very solid wall.
note: i’ve always liked emily henry because she hasn’t fallen into the traps of other contemporary romance authors of trying to make inside jokes with all the so cute stuff that happens *gag* but unfortunately it started to happen here.
first, the eyes. i get it. he has eyes. most of the human population does.
and i’m convinced harry has some kind of coke problem we don’t know about because NO ONE SNIFFS THAT MUCH. IT’S NOT HEALTHY. AND I DON’T CARE WHAT HE SMELLS LIKE ESPECIALLY NOT THE 250TH TIME.
it was an active ick for me.
wyn. look, he’s okay. he’s there. not gonna be there in my memory for long but whatever.
in some ways i liked him. but not really anything worth mentioning. he was what this book was: meh. he's the most one-dimensional character in the book. wyn is a sexy lamp. (if you aren’t aware of what the sexy lamp is, please google it.)
not to mention i feel like from what we got to see if their relationship, it was just a lot of:
harry: “i don’t deserve you, blah blah blah”
wyn: “i’ll love you forever in every universe, blah blah blah”
like that exact situation happened at least 3 times. that’s not a lot, but it’s strange it’s happened thrice.
the friend group/friend dramas/all that shit. i’m not sure what sense of surprise or whatever was meant to be here, but it was painfully obvious from the beginning that they all had their own shit going on. i gave sabrina the benefit of the doubt, but god she’s insufferable. i can understand some people needing more control and having that sort of personality quirk - we all have them - but this is an INNATE characteristic in a person and they either would have run into a problem with it earlier if they had incompatible or clashing personalities for friends, or they would have made different friends. it’s so stupid that it’s happening now. and at the same time, i don’t care.
i’m not going to lie i don’t really care about cleo either i barely remember anything about her, but kimmy? loml.
someone said (i think ale?) in their review that they felt like they were third wheeling this friend group, like they were doing their own thing and as the reader you didn’t really have a reason to care, and that’s exactly how i feel!!
the setting. hear me out. emily henry has previously had wonderful settings to all her novels, very atmospheric and interesting, and this one felt dull in comparison. it was there ofc, but i’m not gonna remember it.
the ending. girl, please. i know that harry had problems with her job, but throughout the novel she reaffirmed that though it was hard, she enjoyed her job. THEN WHY IS SHE GIVING IT UP TO MOVE ACROSS THE COUNTRY FOR A RELATIONSHIP THAT MIGHT FALL APART AGAIN BECAUSE THEY CAN’T FUCKING TALK TO EACH OTHER? the math isn’t mathing.
also, people can have hobbies and passions that exist outside of making money. that’s a normal healthy thing to do. this is like a larger issue relating to capitalism and triggering my fight or flight but not everything has to be mercenary. that so often ruins passions and it annoys me when so many people do that. why can’t shorty just like pottery??
i’m sure i forgot something and i’ll definitely come update this but at the end of it i do still love emily henry as an author and i will continue to read whatever she publishes.
i love how she creates stories differently with different plots and that the characters are all different and not carbon copies of each other.
and as previously mentioned, i’d propose to her writing style.
basically, i’m pretending my signed copy is of book lovers.
------
i'm leaving this pre-review bc its gorgeous:
this acts as my love letter to emily henry, love of my life, so if you’re not emily henry, then please continue on your way-
look, emily, my love, i’m sure i will adore this book and everything in it with all my heart just as i have all of your others. i would buy your grocery list. i would adore your grocery list. i would give up the first born child that i’m not planning to have for your grocery list.
but girl i’m scared. one of my least favorite tropes is second chance romance. i won’t recover if this book ends up being the reason that we fall out of love. but i have faith in you and my preordered signed hardcover ♥
br with alayla!!
and as alayla would say: sigh.
(if you want to read what alayla actually said (you do), it's right here: sigh.)
there are a lot of things i didn’t like about this. my favorite part, to be honest, was emily’s writing. i love her prose and style and her banter is TO DIE FOR. it will always feel like a warm hug from someone you know and haven’t seen in a while and i’m never not going to love it.
butttttt that’s pretty much where it ends.
“what didn’t i like,” i heard nobody ask?
well, since you asked…
harriet. don’t get me wrong, i liked her occasionally. i even related to her occasionally. but it was 400 pages long and when she’s being annoying for 350 of them, “occasionally” doesn’t cut it.
maybe my biggest problem with all of it was concerning her: SHES SO HORNY OH MY GOD. why is nobody talking about this 😭 i swear to god every single chapter was her being horny and wanting to literally jump wyn and thinking about jumping wyn and fantasizing about jumping wyn and IT GOT SO OLD HOLY SHIT. there was no tension between them because there wasn’t room after all the lust.
and because of this- i didn’t feel the broken love i’m meant to. i was meant to feel all sad and whatever but i didn’t feel whatever loving and amazing relationship they used to have BECAUSE HER INTERNAL MONOLOGUE WAS SOLELY WANTING TO FUCK HIM.
i love a slut era as much as the next person but there’s a reason a slut era isn’t about finding love-
my eyes were rolling. if that old wives tale about the wind is true, i’d be so blind rn i wouldn’t have been able to finish reading the book.
and because of this, when they finally did have sex, i couldn’t have cared less. there was no tension. i was falling asleep because i felt like i’ve already read this 100000000 times in harry’s internal monologue.
also all the shit with her being dramatic and assuming shit and whatnot made me want to smash my head into a very solid wall.
note: i’ve always liked emily henry because she hasn’t fallen into the traps of other contemporary romance authors of trying to make inside jokes with all the so cute stuff that happens *gag* but unfortunately it started to happen here.
first, the eyes. i get it. he has eyes. most of the human population does.
and i’m convinced harry has some kind of coke problem we don’t know about because NO ONE SNIFFS THAT MUCH. IT’S NOT HEALTHY. AND I DON’T CARE WHAT HE SMELLS LIKE ESPECIALLY NOT THE 250TH TIME.
it was an active ick for me.
wyn. look, he’s okay. he’s there. not gonna be there in my memory for long but whatever.
in some ways i liked him. but not really anything worth mentioning. he was what this book was: meh. he's the most one-dimensional character in the book. wyn is a sexy lamp. (if you aren’t aware of what the sexy lamp is, please google it.)
not to mention i feel like from what we got to see if their relationship, it was just a lot of:
harry: “i don’t deserve you, blah blah blah”
wyn: “i’ll love you forever in every universe, blah blah blah”
like that exact situation happened at least 3 times. that’s not a lot, but it’s strange it’s happened thrice.
the friend group/friend dramas/all that shit. i’m not sure what sense of surprise or whatever was meant to be here, but it was painfully obvious from the beginning that they all had their own shit going on. i gave sabrina the benefit of the doubt, but god she’s insufferable. i can understand some people needing more control and having that sort of personality quirk - we all have them - but this is an INNATE characteristic in a person and they either would have run into a problem with it earlier if they had incompatible or clashing personalities for friends, or they would have made different friends. it’s so stupid that it’s happening now. and at the same time, i don’t care.
i’m not going to lie i don’t really care about cleo either i barely remember anything about her, but kimmy? loml.
someone said (i think ale?) in their review that they felt like they were third wheeling this friend group, like they were doing their own thing and as the reader you didn’t really have a reason to care, and that’s exactly how i feel!!
the setting. hear me out. emily henry has previously had wonderful settings to all her novels, very atmospheric and interesting, and this one felt dull in comparison. it was there ofc, but i’m not gonna remember it.
the ending. girl, please. i know that harry had problems with her job, but throughout the novel she reaffirmed that though it was hard, she enjoyed her job. THEN WHY IS SHE GIVING IT UP TO MOVE ACROSS THE COUNTRY FOR A RELATIONSHIP THAT MIGHT FALL APART AGAIN BECAUSE THEY CAN’T FUCKING TALK TO EACH OTHER? the math isn’t mathing.
also, people can have hobbies and passions that exist outside of making money. that’s a normal healthy thing to do. this is like a larger issue relating to capitalism and triggering my fight or flight but not everything has to be mercenary. that so often ruins passions and it annoys me when so many people do that. why can’t shorty just like pottery??
i’m sure i forgot something and i’ll definitely come update this but at the end of it i do still love emily henry as an author and i will continue to read whatever she publishes.
i love how she creates stories differently with different plots and that the characters are all different and not carbon copies of each other.
and as previously mentioned, i’d propose to her writing style.
basically, i’m pretending my signed copy is of book lovers.
------
i'm leaving this pre-review bc its gorgeous:
this acts as my love letter to emily henry, love of my life, so if you’re not emily henry, then please continue on your way-
look, emily, my love, i’m sure i will adore this book and everything in it with all my heart just as i have all of your others. i would buy your grocery list. i would adore your grocery list. i would give up the first born child that i’m not planning to have for your grocery list.
but girl i’m scared. one of my least favorite tropes is second chance romance. i won’t recover if this book ends up being the reason that we fall out of love. but i have faith in you and my preordered signed hardcover ♥
May 1, 2023
EH is a master at creating relationship dynamics that make you believe in them. i have read and rated all of her adult romances 5 stars because of her ability to make me fall in love with her characters and this book is no different.
i adored reading harriet and wyns past chapters. they had such an enjoyable connection, which made reading their present day chapters so heartbreaking. their entire journey was one i felt super invested in from the beginning and was rooting for them every step of the way. and i really, really loved how EH wrote harriets feelings about wyn. very poetic. very romantic. i actually think this book has some of EHs better writing!
so why is this not getting 5 stars then, you ask? it would have if harriet and wyn were the only focus of the book. but a significant part of the story is about their friend group as well, and the whole drama of “its our last summer and we are growing apart” just wasnt as appealing to me. i understand its necessity for the plot, but it just didnt interest me at all. should have know this book would have been a little different based on the cover featuring six people rather than just the classic two.
but all in all, a sweet story and another win for EH.
↠ 4.5 stars
i adored reading harriet and wyns past chapters. they had such an enjoyable connection, which made reading their present day chapters so heartbreaking. their entire journey was one i felt super invested in from the beginning and was rooting for them every step of the way. and i really, really loved how EH wrote harriets feelings about wyn. very poetic. very romantic. i actually think this book has some of EHs better writing!
so why is this not getting 5 stars then, you ask? it would have if harriet and wyn were the only focus of the book. but a significant part of the story is about their friend group as well, and the whole drama of “its our last summer and we are growing apart” just wasnt as appealing to me. i understand its necessity for the plot, but it just didnt interest me at all. should have know this book would have been a little different based on the cover featuring six people rather than just the classic two.
but all in all, a sweet story and another win for EH.
↠ 4.5 stars
June 14, 2023
i will never recover. ❤️🩹
May 15, 2023
“Love, I think. That’s new. And I’ll never be happy without it again.”
So, I spent the last 100 pages or so crying. 😪
Emily Henry did the damn thing. That ending was perfection. It was everything this story needed and what I needed.
There’s this sense of warmth every time I pick up one of Emily Henry’s books. I can’t figure out whether this is a feeling specific to her books alone or the feeling you get when you are reading a story that’s about to become your favourite.
It’s probably a combination of both.
Her stories have all felt magical to me.Bar You and Me on Vacation, but we’re not talking about that book. I love how this felt so slice of life. So vulnerable, so intimate and human and ordinary in a way that’s true to real life. I know I’m reading something wonderful when I find myself pausing, taking a moment to sit with the story and reflect on my own life.
It was pretty genius to divide this book into two different timelines.
The ‘Happy Place’ chapters felt like I was visiting a really happy and safe place, happy moments that these characters experienced where everything felt right in the world.
‘Real Life’ felt as good as only real life can feel: not enough, bleak, where you find yourself drowning without even realising it, not knowing how you got there and with just enough happy moments felt in between to keep going.
Both these timelines allowed us to truly get to know our characters deeply, when life brought out the best in them as well as when life wasn’t working in their favour.
This story just brought out so many feelings within me that I can’t really articulate. There was almost a sense of desperation to it. By which I mean that these two characters were searching for something within themselves. Of worth, of love, belonging, to be seen as you are, to just be enough and Emily Henry dissected and captured all of those uncomfortable emotions so well.
There isn’t a thing I would change about it. Wyn and Harry honestly had what dreams are made off. Everything about them two together felt soul-level right. It was a treat to see them fall in love (again).
The found family aspect represented belonging in a way that I think we all want to experience, with people who just know and accept you at your core.
“You are in all my happiest places. You are where my mind goes when it needs to be soothed.”
If, like me, you were doubting a happily ever after, then fear not. I was fearing. Emily Henry put my feelings through the wringer. Uncalled for but it made that ending so much more worth it. It is a romance, at the end of the day. The most beautiful of love stories.
Shoutout to Wyn’s parents. I want them to be my parents. 🥹
*Trigger warnings for loss of a parent/depression.*
———————————————
Do you see this cover? I want to live in it. 🥹
Pre-ordered!
So, I spent the last 100 pages or so crying. 😪
Emily Henry did the damn thing. That ending was perfection. It was everything this story needed and what I needed.
There’s this sense of warmth every time I pick up one of Emily Henry’s books. I can’t figure out whether this is a feeling specific to her books alone or the feeling you get when you are reading a story that’s about to become your favourite.
It’s probably a combination of both.
Her stories have all felt magical to me.
It was pretty genius to divide this book into two different timelines.
The ‘Happy Place’ chapters felt like I was visiting a really happy and safe place, happy moments that these characters experienced where everything felt right in the world.
‘Real Life’ felt as good as only real life can feel: not enough, bleak, where you find yourself drowning without even realising it, not knowing how you got there and with just enough happy moments felt in between to keep going.
Both these timelines allowed us to truly get to know our characters deeply, when life brought out the best in them as well as when life wasn’t working in their favour.
This story just brought out so many feelings within me that I can’t really articulate. There was almost a sense of desperation to it. By which I mean that these two characters were searching for something within themselves. Of worth, of love, belonging, to be seen as you are, to just be enough and Emily Henry dissected and captured all of those uncomfortable emotions so well.
There isn’t a thing I would change about it. Wyn and Harry honestly had what dreams are made off. Everything about them two together felt soul-level right. It was a treat to see them fall in love (again).
The found family aspect represented belonging in a way that I think we all want to experience, with people who just know and accept you at your core.
“You are in all my happiest places. You are where my mind goes when it needs to be soothed.”
If, like me, you were doubting a happily ever after, then fear not. I was fearing. Emily Henry put my feelings through the wringer. Uncalled for but it made that ending so much more worth it. It is a romance, at the end of the day. The most beautiful of love stories.
Shoutout to Wyn’s parents. I want them to be my parents. 🥹
*Trigger warnings for loss of a parent/depression.*
———————————————
Do you see this cover? I want to live in it. 🥹
Pre-ordered!
Read
May 19, 2023This was a real sleeper for me but holy shit I ended up loving it. Emily Henry just does it every timeeeeee. More thorough thoughts TK!
May 16, 2023
TL;DR: Happy Place felt like an inside joke that I just didn’t understand. I was sitting there feeling awkward and out of place because a friend group I’m not a part of was the main character, not the relationship. It was an overall sad read, focusing on friendships drifting apart, parents getting old/dying, and failed expectations (imposed mainly by self doubt and pressure from friends and family). Maybe it’s cliche to admit, but I truly couldn’t care about 95% of this book. I didn’t buy their HEA. Further, Henry’s writing was way too dense and purple for what was already a heavy read. My happy place was the last page.
_____
Happy Place is very similar to People We Meet on Vacation with the flashbacks and failed relationship that all hinged on a “mysterious” fight. Harriet was wishy washy and was too much of a people pleaser/ problem fixer and Wyn was so self deprecating. The rest of the friends weren’t interesting. They actually just sucked, especially Sabrina.
It was more depressing than anything because it was less romance and more the trials and tribulations of being an adult. That shit is sad and not especially romantic. Plus you get flashbacks of Wyn’s very alive and healthy parents and then in the present his dad is dead and mother has Parkinson’s. It was just heavy all around. I’m not saying romances can’t deal with real issues and hard topics, but frankly it just didn’t make for an interesting read and it overshadowed the romance. The phrase “happy place” is basically a trigger for me now because it kept being repeated.
As for the steam, the sex was delayed so long I got bored during the actual scene. They kept getting interrupted by people or or “sudden flashes of reality” during the first 80% of the book, which erased the sexual tension… so yeah not fun. It’s a flowery, vague, and short sex scene anyways. Only one scene. The payoff for waiting 9+ hours was the bare minimum.
✨
**SPOILERS**
Further, I simply hated the reason for their breakup. It made me dislike Wyn idc he was too insecure and it being “it wasn’t you it’s me” is just something that I viscerally hate so much. I understand why he broke it off which even made sense and I don’t blame him for that, but the way he went about it was so frustrating and selfish.
Wyn made the decision for the relationship without talking to Harriet and never really understood that. He does the same thing in the present too. “You can’t move to Montana because I know you better than you know yourself.” And both times Harriet blames herself!! She’s not blameless but come on girl. Also she wants to be a potter 😭😭? That was so fucking random lmao. Good thing she got scholarships I guess because throwing away your successful brain surgery career is wild behavior.
**END OF SPOILERS**
✨
As for the writing, Henry uses so many adjectives and metaphors that I can’t help but feel claustrophobic. It’s definitely a personal preference but her writing is just so dense. This was my first EH audiobook since Beach Read and I really think it exacerbates the issue. The prose is purple and her metaphors have metaphors.
She describes every little detail about every little thing and I got so overwhelmed. The amount of times this man bit his lip, licked his lip, twitched his lip…please god make it stop. My first thought 5% in was “wow, so many words.” So coupled with a boring plot about a group of friends I really didn’t like…it just really wasn’t the book for me.
Overall, the audiobook in the PRH audio app kept going back several minutes randomly (idk what was going on) and I could barely tell I was rereading parts. The book just blended together in a big blob of blah. The narration itself was great but couldn’t save a boring book with an HEA I didn’t believe. This will be the last Emily Henry book I read. I gave it a shot because I love the cover and pink is my kryptonite. But no more. My happy place was the last page.
⭐️⭐️.25/5 🌶️.5/5
P.S. Wyn uses cinnamon toothpaste and clove deodorant which is serial killer behavior.
Thanks to PRHaudio for an ALC. All opinions are honest and my own.
_____
Happy Place is very similar to People We Meet on Vacation with the flashbacks and failed relationship that all hinged on a “mysterious” fight. Harriet was wishy washy and was too much of a people pleaser/ problem fixer and Wyn was so self deprecating. The rest of the friends weren’t interesting. They actually just sucked, especially Sabrina.
It was more depressing than anything because it was less romance and more the trials and tribulations of being an adult. That shit is sad and not especially romantic. Plus you get flashbacks of Wyn’s very alive and healthy parents and then in the present his dad is dead and mother has Parkinson’s. It was just heavy all around. I’m not saying romances can’t deal with real issues and hard topics, but frankly it just didn’t make for an interesting read and it overshadowed the romance. The phrase “happy place” is basically a trigger for me now because it kept being repeated.
As for the steam, the sex was delayed so long I got bored during the actual scene. They kept getting interrupted by people or or “sudden flashes of reality” during the first 80% of the book, which erased the sexual tension… so yeah not fun. It’s a flowery, vague, and short sex scene anyways. Only one scene. The payoff for waiting 9+ hours was the bare minimum.
✨
**SPOILERS**
Further, I simply hated the reason for their breakup. It made me dislike Wyn idc he was too insecure and it being “it wasn’t you it’s me” is just something that I viscerally hate so much. I understand why he broke it off which even made sense and I don’t blame him for that, but the way he went about it was so frustrating and selfish.
Wyn made the decision for the relationship without talking to Harriet and never really understood that. He does the same thing in the present too. “You can’t move to Montana because I know you better than you know yourself.” And both times Harriet blames herself!! She’s not blameless but come on girl. Also she wants to be a potter 😭😭? That was so fucking random lmao. Good thing she got scholarships I guess because throwing away your successful brain surgery career is wild behavior.
**END OF SPOILERS**
✨
As for the writing, Henry uses so many adjectives and metaphors that I can’t help but feel claustrophobic. It’s definitely a personal preference but her writing is just so dense. This was my first EH audiobook since Beach Read and I really think it exacerbates the issue. The prose is purple and her metaphors have metaphors.
She describes every little detail about every little thing and I got so overwhelmed. The amount of times this man bit his lip, licked his lip, twitched his lip…please god make it stop. My first thought 5% in was “wow, so many words.” So coupled with a boring plot about a group of friends I really didn’t like…it just really wasn’t the book for me.
Overall, the audiobook in the PRH audio app kept going back several minutes randomly (idk what was going on) and I could barely tell I was rereading parts. The book just blended together in a big blob of blah. The narration itself was great but couldn’t save a boring book with an HEA I didn’t believe. This will be the last Emily Henry book I read. I gave it a shot because I love the cover and pink is my kryptonite. But no more. My happy place was the last page.
⭐️⭐️.25/5 🌶️.5/5
P.S. Wyn uses cinnamon toothpaste and clove deodorant which is serial killer behavior.
Thanks to PRHaudio for an ALC. All opinions are honest and my own.
October 11, 2023
i really wanted this to be a book i would feel so connected to, and would always stay with me, but it’s not one of those books. don’t get me wrong, the book was painful at times. the writing was absolutely beautiful and some quotes hit me very hard, but i have many issues with the book that ultimately made it fall a bit short for me.
the writing was my favourite thing about this. it was absolutely breathtaking. and i did not feel this way when it came to book lovers. but in this book it knocked me out a couple times. i felt like she went in my head and articulated my thoughts about certain life experiences and emotions so well.
harriet:
”I feel like I’m finally there, that place I’ve always wanted to be, the other side of the lit kitchen windows I could see from my childhood street, where rooms are filled with love and noise and squabbling.”
i truly feel connected to harriet. she was such a fleshed out character. beautifully written. she is me and i am her. her love towards her friends, her thoughts about herself, her conflicting emotions towards her family, even down to her thoughts about her job made me feel so seen.
wyn:
”I think I love you, Harriet.”
“I know I love you, Wyn.”
to me, wyn was very absent from the book. especially in the “real life” chapters. he’s harriet’s fixation, but i don’t really feel like i know him. despite seeing how they got together, i still didn’t feel connected to his character. i wanted more from him. i enjoyed him more at the beginning when they were younger and everything was fresh between them, but this didn’t translate the whole way through. i get what he was going through at the end, but his character still felt very one dimensional to me. wyn is a sexy lamp.
friendships:
”The most important friendships in my life all came down to a decision made by strangers, chance.”
the only friend i remotely related to was sabrina. the way she was the “problem solver” and the one that always tries to bring everyone together and has this desperate need to keep everything the same. felt. so hard. but that’s it. i didn’t like what she did at the end at all. and the rest of the friends were not it for me. i just didn’t enjoy them.
the friend group felt a little bit detached from each other in a way. i was hoping the friendships would feel more real, but something about them didn’t hit the way they were meant to. they felt very disconnected from one another. i know this was kind of the point, but i didn’t like how it was portrayed at all. i think what was missing in the friendships could have been the humour/comedic connection. for me, i love when found families and friend groups in books make me laugh with them, it helps me see their bond. but they felt like a group of strangers to me. and when they were meant to come back together, it didn’t feel like that much of a reward because i just don’t see the connection between them.
romance:
”You are in all of my happiest places. You are where my mind goes when it needs to be soothed.”
everything harriet felt towards wyn was described so eloquently. her love for wyn was such a real thing. it was pouring out of the pages. i can so confidently tell you that harriet loves wyn. however, i could not say the same for wyn. i shouldn’t need a second pov to feel the love radiating from that character. but wyn felt like he was a wall in this. whenever we got a glimpse into how wyn felt about harry, it almost always felt very generic and there wasn’t anything that special or swoon worthy about it. he was a huge missing piece of the puzzle for me. it felt like this was an unrequited love trope or one person falling out of love, and had it actually been, i would have probably enjoyed it more.
conflict:
it honestly felt very realistic to me and that’s one thing i loved about it, but it won’t be for everyone. it’s easy to question their decisions and ask “why didn’t they just talk to each other?” but when life gets busy and you get used to this routine, you dismiss a lot of things. you think things are going to get better. you think that if you don’t talk about it, it isn’t real. if you don’t discuss it, maybe, just maybe, everything will go back to normal eventually. this is just a phase. we’ll get back on track. you hold onto that hope. but then it doesn’t. it starts to fall apart. and reading what they went through felt more sad than annoying for me. however, this won’t be the case for everybody.
resolution:
the ending felt extremely rushed. once we had the full reason for the breakup, i don’t think it was explored enough. things felt so patchy at the end. i think this book had a lot of potential, but i’m not the biggest fan of the way it was executed—hence my conflicting feelings.
fav quotes:
”Without even trying, I knew exactly where he was at all times, could likely cover my eyes, get spun around, and still point to him on the first try.”
“I hate how entangled we still feel on a quantum level. Like my body will never stop trying to find its way back to his.”
“Home, I think. That’s new. But it’s not. It’s been growing there for a while, this new room in my heart, this space just for Wyn that I carry with me everywhere I go.”
“When he promised to love me forever, I believed him. That was what made me the angriest, with both of us.”
“Everything keeps spinning. But my mind’s always got one hand on you.”
“His love is steady, constant. Easier than breathing, because breathing is something you can overthink, to the point that you forget how your lungs work and get yourself into a panic. I could never forget how to love Wyn.”
“I’ve memorized the rhythm of his breathing when he sleeps and the smell of his skin when he’s been out in the sun.”
“In every universe, it’s you for me. Even if it’s not me for you.”
“Stupid, stupid, stupid heart. Don’t you know he hasn’t been yours to cry over for a long time?”
“I met you, and I finally belonged somewhere again.”
“Before I even see him, my heart starts singing its favourite song. You, you, you.”
—
in honour of this being second chance (one of the greatest tropes if i do say so myself), i’m going to be nice and give emily henry a second chance to blow me away
the writing was my favourite thing about this. it was absolutely breathtaking. and i did not feel this way when it came to book lovers. but in this book it knocked me out a couple times. i felt like she went in my head and articulated my thoughts about certain life experiences and emotions so well.
harriet:
”I feel like I’m finally there, that place I’ve always wanted to be, the other side of the lit kitchen windows I could see from my childhood street, where rooms are filled with love and noise and squabbling.”
i truly feel connected to harriet. she was such a fleshed out character. beautifully written. she is me and i am her. her love towards her friends, her thoughts about herself, her conflicting emotions towards her family, even down to her thoughts about her job made me feel so seen.
wyn:
”I think I love you, Harriet.”
“I know I love you, Wyn.”
to me, wyn was very absent from the book. especially in the “real life” chapters. he’s harriet’s fixation, but i don’t really feel like i know him. despite seeing how they got together, i still didn’t feel connected to his character. i wanted more from him. i enjoyed him more at the beginning when they were younger and everything was fresh between them, but this didn’t translate the whole way through. i get what he was going through at the end, but his character still felt very one dimensional to me. wyn is a sexy lamp.
friendships:
”The most important friendships in my life all came down to a decision made by strangers, chance.”
the only friend i remotely related to was sabrina. the way she was the “problem solver” and the one that always tries to bring everyone together and has this desperate need to keep everything the same. felt. so hard. but that’s it. i didn’t like what she did at the end at all. and the rest of the friends were not it for me. i just didn’t enjoy them.
the friend group felt a little bit detached from each other in a way. i was hoping the friendships would feel more real, but something about them didn’t hit the way they were meant to. they felt very disconnected from one another. i know this was kind of the point, but i didn’t like how it was portrayed at all. i think what was missing in the friendships could have been the humour/comedic connection. for me, i love when found families and friend groups in books make me laugh with them, it helps me see their bond. but they felt like a group of strangers to me. and when they were meant to come back together, it didn’t feel like that much of a reward because i just don’t see the connection between them.
romance:
”You are in all of my happiest places. You are where my mind goes when it needs to be soothed.”
everything harriet felt towards wyn was described so eloquently. her love for wyn was such a real thing. it was pouring out of the pages. i can so confidently tell you that harriet loves wyn. however, i could not say the same for wyn. i shouldn’t need a second pov to feel the love radiating from that character. but wyn felt like he was a wall in this. whenever we got a glimpse into how wyn felt about harry, it almost always felt very generic and there wasn’t anything that special or swoon worthy about it. he was a huge missing piece of the puzzle for me. it felt like this was an unrequited love trope or one person falling out of love, and had it actually been, i would have probably enjoyed it more.
conflict:
it honestly felt very realistic to me and that’s one thing i loved about it, but it won’t be for everyone. it’s easy to question their decisions and ask “why didn’t they just talk to each other?” but when life gets busy and you get used to this routine, you dismiss a lot of things. you think things are going to get better. you think that if you don’t talk about it, it isn’t real. if you don’t discuss it, maybe, just maybe, everything will go back to normal eventually. this is just a phase. we’ll get back on track. you hold onto that hope. but then it doesn’t. it starts to fall apart. and reading what they went through felt more sad than annoying for me. however, this won’t be the case for everybody.
resolution:
the ending felt extremely rushed. once we had the full reason for the breakup, i don’t think it was explored enough. things felt so patchy at the end. i think this book had a lot of potential, but i’m not the biggest fan of the way it was executed—hence my conflicting feelings.
fav quotes:
”Without even trying, I knew exactly where he was at all times, could likely cover my eyes, get spun around, and still point to him on the first try.”
“I hate how entangled we still feel on a quantum level. Like my body will never stop trying to find its way back to his.”
“Home, I think. That’s new. But it’s not. It’s been growing there for a while, this new room in my heart, this space just for Wyn that I carry with me everywhere I go.”
“When he promised to love me forever, I believed him. That was what made me the angriest, with both of us.”
“Everything keeps spinning. But my mind’s always got one hand on you.”
“His love is steady, constant. Easier than breathing, because breathing is something you can overthink, to the point that you forget how your lungs work and get yourself into a panic. I could never forget how to love Wyn.”
“I’ve memorized the rhythm of his breathing when he sleeps and the smell of his skin when he’s been out in the sun.”
“In every universe, it’s you for me. Even if it’s not me for you.”
“Stupid, stupid, stupid heart. Don’t you know he hasn’t been yours to cry over for a long time?”
“I met you, and I finally belonged somewhere again.”
“Before I even see him, my heart starts singing its favourite song. You, you, you.”
—
in honour of this being second chance (one of the greatest tropes if i do say so myself), i’m going to be nice and give emily henry a second chance to blow me away
May 4, 2023
2 stars 🩷
i honestly never thought i would give emily henry a bad rating…but there was so much about this book that I did not like.
the plot of the story is basically a second chance romance, between two ex fiancés, who reunite after being broken up for five months. the book has a dual timeline (past chapters and present chapters). in the past chapters, they show how wyn (H) and harriet (h) met, how their romance progressed and how it fell apart. while the present scenes show how they slowly start to reunite, while also trying to figure out why the breakup happened in the first place. at the same time, they hide their breakup from their best friends and continue to act like they’re together out of fear their friend group will fall apart.
spoilers below 👹
first, i had a problem with the jumps between past and present. i have read books where this worked, but I found myself really wanting to get back to the present scenes and finding the flashback chapters to be very lackluster.
one of the biggest problems i had with this book was the break up. throughout the book, the harriet explains the wyn broke up with her over the phone and it happened after some OM drama. essentially, she went out with a coworker and he kissed her. she didn’t kiss him back, pushed him away and she immediately called wyn to tell him. that’s when he broke up with her. to make it worse he immediately returns all the her stuff within days of the break up 😕
for him to breakup with her like that after 8 years together 🫥
also, wyn never pined or groveled. harriet ended up being the one that groveled and even tried to “get revenge” by looking hot, grinding on him when they were faking it, etc. i guess this was a way to get a ride out of him but it made no sense when she didn’t do anything wrong. like what is this–
wyn is definitely emily henry’s worst hero. i hated that he would tell harriet that he was finally happy and then be glad when she lied and said she was too. i felt like wyn didn’t even try to question it. i do think he was happier now than during his relationship. during the end of their relationship his dad died and his mom was diagnosed with parkinsons. after they breakup he was finally on medication for his recently diagnosed depression, he moved back to montana to be with his mom and finally found a job he loved, so I understand why he was happier now than when he was dating harriet. but he dated her for 8 years but couldn’t tell she was actually miserable??? i think he wanted to be blind regarding that so he wouldn’t feel guilty about his newfound happiness in life.
he also broke up with her because she couldn’t pick a wedding date…YOUR DAD LITERALLY JUST DIED HOW TF WAS SHE JUST GONNA BE LIKE “ohhh i want a spring wedding and let’s spend money NEITHER of us have”
when they finally get back together at the end of the book, it felt like nothing had changed. part of the reason why they broke up is when they moved to san francisco for harriet’s residency and he hated feeling inferior to her friends, having shitty jobs and being away from his mom. in the end of the book, harriet quits her residency and moves to montana to make pottery.
i really can’t make this up
as ellie said, in this economy???
i mean, wyn had to have known harriet would be very busy?? SHE’S IN RESIDENCY 🧍🏻♀️ she’s not gonna have the time and energy to talk about their relationship problems. i didn’t like how EH tried to justify harriet needing to quit just because she didn’t think she was good at it, she hates the direness of it and she hates the smell of antiseptic…it felt like she decided to start making pottery as a form of income overnight.
then harriet tells her parents “don’t worry, i’m gonna pay off the loans myself” yeah maybe after 200 years 😵💫
and if she doesn’t want to be a surgeon, have her become a family practitioner or something??? becoming a neurosurgeon isn’t the end all
i understand that she didn’t actually like what she was doing but for her to just move across the country to be with wyn was part of the reason they broke up in the first place??? it made zero sense to me.
honestly, when they reunited it felt like he was very indifferent about their break up. it seemed like harriet was the one suffering and he didn’t struggle at all. i think this book desperately needed wyn’s POV so we could try to understand the reasoning for his actions. why did he lie to harriet, why didn’t he break up with her sooner, why didn’t he communicate with her better, why the FUCK did he breakup with her over the phone??? his mental health at that time in his life needed to be explored more for me to understand his thought process. everything about wyn was very flat. nothing about his life was explored, which should have been if that was a major reason for the break up
also who tf tells someone they will always love them when they’re broken up? it’s not like he had to change before he fully committed to her again 🤨 NOTHING CHANGED BETWEEN HIM SAYING I LOVE YOU AND THEM GETTING BACK TOGETHER
make it make sense EH, please
the side characters were also boring and I couldn’t find myself giving any shit about their problems
this was entirely forgettable but i still love you EH 🫶🏻
i honestly never thought i would give emily henry a bad rating…but there was so much about this book that I did not like.
the plot of the story is basically a second chance romance, between two ex fiancés, who reunite after being broken up for five months. the book has a dual timeline (past chapters and present chapters). in the past chapters, they show how wyn (H) and harriet (h) met, how their romance progressed and how it fell apart. while the present scenes show how they slowly start to reunite, while also trying to figure out why the breakup happened in the first place. at the same time, they hide their breakup from their best friends and continue to act like they’re together out of fear their friend group will fall apart.
spoilers below 👹
first, i had a problem with the jumps between past and present. i have read books where this worked, but I found myself really wanting to get back to the present scenes and finding the flashback chapters to be very lackluster.
one of the biggest problems i had with this book was the break up. throughout the book, the harriet explains the wyn broke up with her over the phone and it happened after some OM drama. essentially, she went out with a coworker and he kissed her. she didn’t kiss him back, pushed him away and she immediately called wyn to tell him. that’s when he broke up with her. to make it worse he immediately returns all the her stuff within days of the break up 😕
for him to breakup with her like that after 8 years together 🫥
also, wyn never pined or groveled. harriet ended up being the one that groveled and even tried to “get revenge” by looking hot, grinding on him when they were faking it, etc. i guess this was a way to get a ride out of him but it made no sense when she didn’t do anything wrong. like what is this–
“What about you?” he rasps. “Are you with him?”
There it is. Acid rises through my stomach. A cleaving goes through my chest.
I refuse to cry. Not over something that happened five months ago. Not over someone who’s already told me he doesn’t want me.
“That’s what you think of me?” I scoot back from him until the wall meets my back. “You still honestly believe I cheated on you, and beyond that, you think I’d turn around and do it to someone else too.”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Wyn says, his voice gravelly. “I’m not accusing you of anything! I’m trying to ask . . .”
“Trying to ask what, Wyn?” I demand.
“If you’re happy,” he says. “I want to know that you’re happy too.”
wyn is definitely emily henry’s worst hero. i hated that he would tell harriet that he was finally happy and then be glad when she lied and said she was too. i felt like wyn didn’t even try to question it. i do think he was happier now than during his relationship. during the end of their relationship his dad died and his mom was diagnosed with parkinsons. after they breakup he was finally on medication for his recently diagnosed depression, he moved back to montana to be with his mom and finally found a job he loved, so I understand why he was happier now than when he was dating harriet. but he dated her for 8 years but couldn’t tell she was actually miserable??? i think he wanted to be blind regarding that so he wouldn’t feel guilty about his newfound happiness in life.
“It’s amazing. Seeing you like this. So happy.”
He studies me for a beat before dropping his gaze on a nod. “I am. I’m really happy.”
[…]
“You too, right?” He matches my gaze.
That seesaw feeling rocks through me. “Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”
“Good,” he says softly.
he also broke up with her because she couldn’t pick a wedding date…YOUR DAD LITERALLY JUST DIED HOW TF WAS SHE JUST GONNA BE LIKE “ohhh i want a spring wedding and let’s spend money NEITHER of us have”
when they finally get back together at the end of the book, it felt like nothing had changed. part of the reason why they broke up is when they moved to san francisco for harriet’s residency and he hated feeling inferior to her friends, having shitty jobs and being away from his mom. in the end of the book, harriet quits her residency and moves to montana to make pottery.
i really can’t make this up
as ellie said, in this economy???
i mean, wyn had to have known harriet would be very busy?? SHE’S IN RESIDENCY 🧍🏻♀️ she’s not gonna have the time and energy to talk about their relationship problems. i didn’t like how EH tried to justify harriet needing to quit just because she didn’t think she was good at it, she hates the direness of it and she hates the smell of antiseptic…it felt like she decided to start making pottery as a form of income overnight.
then harriet tells her parents “don’t worry, i’m gonna pay off the loans myself” yeah maybe after 200 years 😵💫
and if she doesn’t want to be a surgeon, have her become a family practitioner or something??? becoming a neurosurgeon isn’t the end all
i understand that she didn’t actually like what she was doing but for her to just move across the country to be with wyn was part of the reason they broke up in the first place??? it made zero sense to me.
honestly, when they reunited it felt like he was very indifferent about their break up. it seemed like harriet was the one suffering and he didn’t struggle at all. i think this book desperately needed wyn’s POV so we could try to understand the reasoning for his actions. why did he lie to harriet, why didn’t he break up with her sooner, why didn’t he communicate with her better, why the FUCK did he breakup with her over the phone??? his mental health at that time in his life needed to be explored more for me to understand his thought process. everything about wyn was very flat. nothing about his life was explored, which should have been if that was a major reason for the break up
also who tf tells someone they will always love them when they’re broken up? it’s not like he had to change before he fully committed to her again 🤨 NOTHING CHANGED BETWEEN HIM SAYING I LOVE YOU AND THEM GETTING BACK TOGETHER
make it make sense EH, please
the side characters were also boring and I couldn’t find myself giving any shit about their problems
this was entirely forgettable but i still love you EH 🫶🏻
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