Happy Place, Emily Henry, 2023
Emily Henry has done it again, my guys. There is no better summer romance writer. Her novels bring me so much joy that I have to take them in doses—one Emily Henry read per summer so as not to over indulge (I am one story behind—Funny Story review coming Summer 2025😉)
Harriet and Wyn met in college, as roommates with their 3 best friends (making a group of 5 total, which then becomes 6 when Chloe finds a partner). After college, the two continued their relationship, got engaged, and within the past year have gone long distance—Wyn in Montana to care for his mother after the death of his father, and Harriet in San Francisco to finish her residency as a brain surgeon (slay).
Now thirty years old, the long-distance circumstance has caused their separation 5 months earlier. They’ve gone no contact, except for the occasional unblock which allows for them to keep from raising alarms of their break up in their friend group chat because, as their friends are also scattered all through the country, they haven’t found the right time to break the news that they’re no longer together. (Let it be noted, too, that they and their friends are probably more invested in one another’s love lives than is typical).
This brings us to the present, where they’re together on an annual vacation at one of the friends’, Sabrina’s, cottage/mansion on the water in Maine. They decide to retain the ruse of their engagement because the cottage is being sold, making this is their official last go-around. To complicate matters further, at the end of the week, Sabrina and Paul (another friend of the original 5) are getting married, and Harriet and Wyn don’t want to ruin their memory by telling everyone they’ve broken up.
I’ll admit fake-dating isn’t my favorite trope, and though I do enjoy a second-chance romance, I worried, going into this, that it would take away from the sweet, get-to-know-you banter that I love so much. HOWEVER, since Emily Henry somehow has supreme knowledge of every romantic scenario, Wyn and Harriet still have banter of the highest regard, with that fresh, palpable anticipation between two people whose love hasn’t yet burned out. It’s both easy to forget and easy to sense the chemistry and poignancy between the two characters who have known each other for the past 8+ years.
I need to also give homage to Emily Henry’s ability to write FRIENDS! SIDE CHARACTERS! As an amateur writer, I find minor characters are incredibly hard to write because a writer is, well, one person, with one personality. You can imagine how difficult it is to emulate 5 different personalities to the extent that each character feels absolutely distinctive in their own right. Friends, written correctly, to me is the mark of a master writer.
Ahh, Emily Henry: queen of dialogue, friendships, and banter. But you know what she’s also queen of? Meaning. Relatability. Real shit.
Wyn and Harriet’s breakup may have colored their relationship in a negative light for the first half of the novel, because, well, as a summer rom-com, we know by just the genre that they’ll end up together in the end but then we’re like, wait, but he just broke up with her out of nowhere?? (since we’re getting the story through Harriet’s first person POV).
But then when the character’s discuss—and as we get more about their past—our impression changes to the hard truth that this is just…a real relationship. Shit isn’t always rainbows and butterflies and people, like it or not, tend to isolate when things get tough.
(Spoilers coming) Wyn had struggled with feeling as though he’s mediocre compared to all the lawyers/brain surgeons in his life, and after losing his dad, he became depressed.
And Harriet (she is me) is your textbook people pleaser. Instead of being upset with Wyn for canceling phone calls, missing flights, losing enthusiasm in their conversations, and all around lacking effort in their long distance (which, I’d say, is an accurate representation of how one who is depressed would behave), Harriet acted like it was no big deal. She didn’t want to add the stress of being unhappy in how things were going between them.
At the cottage, in one scene which I think discusses this issue so astutely, Wyn argues about how Harriet never fought with him, and Harriet realizes that she’d never considered how her passivity in life may read to people as indifference.
The friendships (not to be confused with the friends) were also written very genuinely. Sabrina plans an itinerary in which they do all the things they used to do, but their other friend Chloe becomes annoyed, because although the old things are nice and nostalgic, they’ve grown, inevitably, and have become different people. This, I think, is a very real tension in friendships—one who may want to recreate the past and one who wants to create new experiences. And, as is the reality of many adult friendships, the group doesn’t really keep in touch other than the one week per year they see each other, but that doesn’t make their friendship any less deep.
In the end, I think the friendship lesson was great—friends can grow and change, but their friendships can grow and change with them.
And I think the lesson for the individual was also great—your job doesn’t have to define you. Harriet, who spent endless money and time becoming a brain surgeon, decides that she doesn’t actually love it (same, girl). Luckily, Wyn’s furniture business goes viral and he’s selling tables for $15,000, so, realistically, they can survive on his income.
But, oof, I hate to be so cynical but it is not a good financial decision to quit your six-figure income job to make pottery!! But, again, yeah, yeah, happy summer romance, it’s a part of the cliché. Predictable, yes, but truthfully that can’t even be a critique of the book because by picking up a rom-com, you’re asking for that ending.
Overall, 4/5. I love this book, I really do!! I do wonder, though, if Emily Henry were to rewrite this and play around with the genre, if it may have been a better ending if Harriet and Wyn didn’t end up together.
Thoughts??
Quotes:
I feel the moment his gaze lifts off me and returns to the windshield, but he’s left a mark: from now on, dark cliffs, wind racing through hair, cinnamon paired with clove and pine—all of it will only mean Wyn Connor to me. A door has opened, and I know I’ll never get it shut again.
He’s a golden boy. I’m a girl whose life has been drawn in shades of gray.
I try not to love him.
I really try.
All that heady nostalgia and sweltering lust has become combustible, erupting into anger…
If he can be happy, surely I can be fine.
Because feelings were changeable, and people were unpredictable. You couldn’t hold on to them through the force of will.
Our apartment. It still manages to hold traces of him. Or maybe that’s me, carrying his ghost wherever I go.
Maybe that was part of the anger that burned in me too: disappointment that I hadn’t loved him well enough to make him happy nor well enough to let him go.
Whenever I ask him what’s wrong, he takes my face in his hands and kisses my forehead, tells me soberly, “you’re perfect,” and we forget, for a while, about everything except each other’s mouths and skin, and only later, while he lies curled around me like a question mark in bed, do I realize he hasn’t given me an answer.
I shuck off my clothes and crawl into bed. I don’t cry, but I don’t sleep either.
