Happy Place by Emily Henry Published by Penguin on April 25, 2023
Genres: Fiction / Romance / Contemporary, Fiction / Romance / Romantic Comedy, Fiction / Women
Pages: 400
Format: Hardcover
Source: Book of the Month
INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
“The beach-read master hooks us again."—People
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by BuzzFeed ∙ Paste Magazine ∙ Elle ∙ Southern Living ∙ SheReads ∙ Culturess ∙ Medium ∙ Her Campus ∙ Readers Digest ∙ Zibby Mag and more!
A couple who broke up months ago 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.
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 five months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.
Which is how they find themselves sharing a 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, blissful 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?
My Review
I will be the first to say that I was eager for this book to come out. I have read Beach Read, The People We Meet On Vacation and Book Lovers all by this author, and have enjoyed them. My favorite two were Beach Read and Book Lovers. I can honestly say I was sad when they ended because I enjoyed my time with the characters so much. However, I am sad to say that this is not the case with Happy Place. I was ready for it to be over when I got to the end of the book. GASP I know I did not absolutely love this book.
I took this book out of the library and was only able to have it for a short time before I had to take it back. So I basically read it in just a few days. Maybe the quick reading experience made it feel like the book just dragged out toward the end because I wanted to get it finished so I could move on to something else. Now this is not to say that I did not enjoy the book because I did. If I were to give it a star rating I would say that it was between 3.5 and 4 stars.
So as you can see from the Goodreads description above we are following Wyn and Harriet during a summer vacation with their friends. This story is told in both the past and the present. In the past, we discover how it is that Wyn and Harriet met and how they became engaged while in the present we are following along with them in their day-to-day lives whilst on vacation with their friends. Harriet in the story is working to become a brain surgeon and is currently doing her training in California while Wyn is living back home with his sick mother and doing carpentry work. Harriet is absolutely heartbroken because she has no idea why Wyn broke up with her. Then again maybe a four-minute-long phone conversation won’t hold many details or maybe it is simply because Wyn just did not want to be bothered with explaining his reasoning to her. Either way, Harriet is left heartbroken and believing that she just wasn’t enough for Wyn. After that last phone call, Wyn sent Harriet’s belongings to her just a few days after they broke up sealing the deal that she wasn’t worth it to him. It will be five months before they speak to and or see one another again. For Harriet it is completely unexpected when she arrives at the Maine vacation home and sees Wyn already there…what the hell. This throws her into some serious turmoil because she is not over him, seriously not even close to being over him. She has literally just been a shell of herself since they broke up. What are they to do when their friends still believe them to be happily engaged? AH, the solution to the problem is insert the faking dating trope. They come up with a plan and some ground rules for being engaged while still being broken up just to save face with their friends. The problem is how is Harriet to keep her feeling hidden because they are eating her alive while Wyn doesn’t seem to be torn up about this breakup at all. Let the story begin.
Every year Wyn, Harriet, and their friends head to Maine for their weekly vacation and have been doing this since they were in college and now they are in their thirties. They spend a week together just hanging out, eating, drinking, swimming you know basically a typical vacation. This year however there is more going on besides the Wyn and Harriet situation which remember their friends do not know about. This will be their last summer at this vacation home in Maine because one of their friend’s fathers is selling the place. Not only is there pressure for this to be the best summer ever due to the selling of the home but also the friends are not the same people they have always been. They are older now with lives of their own and some with really big responsibilities on their shoulders. Basically, things that change people, you know life and growing up, and also traumas and or losses. One friend in particular has really noticed that the friend group is not the same and has taken it upon herself to bring them back together making the friendships what they used to be. She however does not take into account that not everyone is up for her ideas and plans which causes an underlying current of frustration among some in the group.
Ok, so I do not want to say much more than what I have already disclosed because I do not want to ruin this reading experience for anyone. I will say though that some of the things I really did enjoy about the story is the feeling of a small beach town in Maine. The community there and the descriptions that are given. I also enjoyed getting to know the friends as their own people granted there was not much of this in the book but what there was I did enjoy. I also can not forget to mention that I enjoyed getting to see the main character’s back stories and how they fit into their own families and each other’s families. I do have to say that Harriet frustrated me to no end. It drove me crazy that she could not or would not think for herself. Everything she did throughout the book was always because it was what she thought someone else wanted from her. Maybe it is because she lacked self-esteem or maybe it was because she was such a people pleaser but non the less it drove me a bit bonkers. It took her the entire story to finally figure out what she wanted out of life and to come clean to those she loved. I am not going to say much about Wyn other than I can understand his behaviors when it came to breaking it off with Harriet. I did feel for him because I understand the feelings that he was having throughout the story. By feelings I mean the mental health things that he was dealing with and struggling with throughout the book.
If you are looking for a fake dating trope and second-chance romance this summer then maybe give this book a go. However, I must warn you that there are some heavier topics in here like the death of a loved one, parental neglect, mental illness, and a physically debilitating disease with one of the characters. Oh and not to forget the unhappy marriage of a couple in the story. Like I said before I liked the story well enough but I thought it was a bit too long and was ready for it to be over. However, this will not stop me from picking up another Emily Henry book in the future.
Trigger Warnings:
- Parental/Spousal Death
- Mental Illness
- Physical Illness
- Unhappy Marriage
- Grief
- Parental Neglect
If you want to see me chatting a bit about this book on my youtube channel than click the video below.