Emily Henry has this habit of taking tropes that I typically despise and turning them into stories I devour. Second chance romances are not my thing, but she made it work.

It’s common knowledge in the creative writing world that your main character has to have a concrete goal to strive for. It needs to be something solid and measurable. Something like ‘happiness’ isn’t good enough because it’s not something you can measure.

Emily Henry laughed in every professors’ face and said, “Challenge accepted.”

Happy Place honestly has a weak premise, so don’t judge the book by the description alone. Harriet and Wyn broke up, but they didn’t tell anyone because they didn’t want to pull their friends and families down. There’s this annual trip that their friend group takes and they’re faking being together for the betterment of the group.

Everything explodes from there, as you can tell.

This is the only four star rating I’ve ever given her books. I felt like Oprah with this author (you get five stars, and you get five stars) until Happy Place. Here’s why.

Emily Henry is famous for her banter and there’s a good amount of it, but not as much as I’m used to from her writing. I also felt that the foundation of this plot was much weaker than her other ones (miscommunication trope… yuck).

This may get me side eyes from some of her die-hard fans, but didn’t Happy Place feel like a watered down People We Meet on Vacation? There were similar themes with the back and forth in timeline and mystery on what happened with the breakup… it just kind of let me down in comparison.

That being said, this is still a four star book. I enjoyed reading it and I’m glad I ended up buying a copy. Even though the romance didn’t really land for me, the theme and friendships did.

The theme of Happy Place is finding yours. As someone who struggles with finding happiness, I teared up a few times toward the end of this one (like all Henry books, if we’re being honest). I left a career that I poured a bunch of money into in order to find my happiness two years ago and I really wish it was this easy.

Anyway, the friendships made this book for me. I adored the friend group and how they survived adulthood and separate lives, discussing how friendships bend and change… but they don’t have to burn out.

Also, Julia Whelan is an amazing narrator if you prefer audiobooks. The way that she performs some of these scenes is mind-blowing.

Overall, it was good. It satisfied my need for spring-to-summer vibes with the vacation home, the water, and the small town coffee shop.

Onto the next!