The reviews for Happy Place are pretty polarizing. You have to be intentional about every friendship you want to flourish. I have a solid group of friends from college and the love and realness you see in Happy Place is so spot on.Īs you get older and your commitments and priorities change, it gets harder to spend time with friends. Maybe it’s because I’m no longer in my twenties, but I found this book and the friendships in it to be so. I’ve been trying to think of a book that has a similar friend vibe-especially adults in their thirties who’ve been friends for a long time and treat one another like family-and honestly, I couldn’t come up with any. While I did appreciate the romance, the real treasure was the friend group. Together? The chemistry, tension, witty banter. When the story starts, it’s clear that Harriet and Wyn are two people who care about each other very much but just could not figure out how to communicate effectively and be together.Īs individuals, I found both Harriet and Wyn so relatable and likable. Wyn is similar to Harriet in some ways, but he tends to hide his insecurities with self-deprecating humor about how he isn’t smart enough or interesting enough. She’s a good friend who tends to avoid letting other people see the cracks in her life and tries really hard to feel good enough to the people she cares about. Harriet is a surgical resident who’s a little uptight and afraid to lay it all out there in her relationships. A second-chance, exes-to-lovers, fake-dating-trope romance? Are you kidding me? Yes, it’s heavy, and yes, it’s melancholy. It was on my most anticipated books of 2023 list, and I absolutely loved it. Happy Place is a breath of fresh air and a warm hug. You can see what you really want and actually welcome it-that kind of permanence and appreciation of who you’re becoming.

It’s about all the painful little steps it takes to love yourself enough to let go of other people’s expectations and disappointment. Happy Place is a story about grief, found family, what makes a relationship grow and change, and what it means to let go of a chapter of your life and all of the expectations that come with it. It feels like everything is coming to an end, even in the midst of so many beginnings. The Maine cottage they visited for years is for sale. This pivotal annual trip marks the last of many things. H appy Place by Emily Henry is about a newly split-up couple, Harriet and Wyn, who somehow find themselves in every ex’s worst-case scenario: stuck together on an annual weeklong vacation with their best friends, pretending they’re still engaged.įor layered reasons that unravel throughout the book, Harriet and Wyn still haven’t told their best friend group about the breakup six months ago.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

Happy Place by Emily Henry