Funny Story by Emily Henry

RomanceContemporary

Feb 24

Written By taylor shepeard

Title: Funny Story

Author: Emily Henry

Publication Date: April 23, 2024

Audience: Adult

Genre: Romance

Sub-Genre: Contemporary

POV: Single

Series: Standalone

Format: Physical

4.25 ⭐ | 2🌶️

Pros:
✨Character Development
✨Genuine and Organic Relationship
✨Development of Complex Family Relationships
✨ Friendships

Cons:
✨Breakup felt a bit contrived

Synopsis

Daphne always loved the way her fiancé Peter told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his …

… lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it…right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.

Which is how Daphne begins her new story: Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads —Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex…right?

*Blurb taken from The StoryGraph

Review

This review may contain spoilers.

Oh, Emily Henry, how I adore your characters.

When Daphne’s fiancé, Peter, leaves her after sleeping with his best friend, Petra, during his Bachelor Party, she finds herself short a relationship and a place to live. Which is where Miles, Petra’s newly-minted-ex, comes into play. He has a spare bedroom. Therefore, the two become happenstance roommates with nothing to connect them aside from broken hearts.

What could have easily been a rebound-centered, trauma-bond relationship instead transformed into a lovely journey between two people who expect the worst from others, despite always hoping for the best. This thought-process leads Daphne to be guarded, an island to herself, whereas Miles is open and kind, helping others despite the knowledge he won’t be good enough and they’ll leave eventually. I love how these two folded into one another, took a step back to build a stronger foundation via friendship, folded into one another yet again, only to realize that being independent for a while and learning to love themselves as individuals was needed to be able to have a strong union. And it worked. We do get a HEA (as expected) and a lovey-dovey couple.

I swear, Henry just gets me. Or, I guess I get her? The way she creates her love stories comes across as realistic and organic and wholly real because they tackle mental walls that so many romances simply skip over. Though I personally enjoyed Book Lovers and Happy Place more than this latest release, I still loved it.

A huge round of applause to my girl for pumping out another yearly reread!