FUNNY STORY BY EMILY HENRY // spoiler-free book review: how is a romance book with the word funny in the title simultaneously hilarious and gut-wrenching? send help!

Give me a medal, I seriously deserve it.

Also, from this point on I solemnly swear to stop this awful EmHen reading habit I’ve developed and finish the dang book. Pulling up my big girl socks from here on out!!!

Title: Funny Story
Author: Emily Henry
Page count: 384
Date published: 23 April 2024
Genre: Adult contemporary romance

🍸

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?

🍸

 

🍸

Big thanks to Penguin Random House UK for the eARC via Netgalley and Penguin Random House SA for the review copy! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

 🍸

STAR RATING: (5 out of 5 stars)

Absolutely shooketh that apparently I’ve finally got around to this book only exactly 2 years after it came out. Anniversary time *jazz hands*

Um, anyway, so whilst we ignore the elephant in the room, I do want to express my immense gratitude to two very special people in my life who deserve an apology. The first being my idol, Emily Henry, whose words don’t express how much I love her work. The second is PRH, who is definitely one person and maybe my favourite ever? I said what I said. You may think I’m being unserious, but do you even know me at all then?

Alright, in all seriousness, I’m quite speechless right now, so I’m spewing nonsense. I’m also quite blinded by the sunshine pouring out of this book. It’s so bright, and I’m finding it very hard to think straight now. So I hope you understand my predicament.

First things first, which is no shock to anyone, her writing guts me every. single. time. This book was no different. It’s just so… effortlessly gorgeous. I don’t really know how to describe but EH describes places, emotions, the world around us in such a way its like I myself was describing them.

Whilst this isn’t my new favourite book of hers, I’m starting to realise that an author’s new book doesn’t need to beat out the last I read you know? All it needs to do is take you out of your head and introduce you to a new place that you can fall in love with. Wow, growth, I know. I’m also only semi-inspired by our librarian main character, Daphne with the biggest love of books. So there’s that.

Let’s talk about the romance which was just so,,,, tender omg. Are you kidding me with these two?

Miles is pure chaos, and I was absolutely here for it. Bring back sensitive men, is what I say. And they just had effortless chemistry, mostly from a place of empathy for the other. I just really appreciated that this was a story about going beyond yourself to care about people because they deserve it. GIVE ME THE TISSUES PLEASE!!!!

Also, someone said this is Emily’s horniest book and yes.

If you’re looking for a book that feels like a warm hug and a caress to the cheek, she’s got you. Also, if by some chance you hadn’t yet read/heard of this book then I really don’t know what rock you’re under. I’m just the messenger here to enforce my opinion on you *wink wink*

Seriously, go pick up this roommates-to-lovers romcom right this second, and don’t come back until you do!!!

“All those moments throughout the days, weeks, months that don’t get marked on calendars with hand-drawn stars or little stickers. Those are the moments that make a life. Not grand gestures, but mundane details that, over time, accumulate until you have a home, instead of a house. The things that matter. The things I can’t stop longing for.”

🍸

“You can’t force a person to show up, but you can learn a lesson when they don’t”

🍸

“I’m a cynic. And a cynic is a romantic who’s too scared to hope.”

🍸

“You make the people you care about feel like … He pauses. Like you want all of them. Not just the good parts. And that’s terrifying to someone who’s spent a lifetime avoiding those other pieces of themselves.”

🍸

“And I know I’m not who you pictured yourself with, but I think I could be, eventually. If you’ll let me. So don’t go. Because I don’t want you to. Because you’re my best friend, and I’m in love with you.”

🍸

“I don’t think there’s a right way to feel,’ I say. ‘And you can’t control it, anyway. Feelings are like weather. They just happen, and then they pass.”

🍸

“A part of me is just waiting,” I rasp, “for the moment when you see whatever it is that drives people away. And I don’t want that. I don’t want you to stop wanting me around. I think it might break my heart to be someone you don’t like.”

🍸

“Life isn’t a competition, and neither is love, but I’m still the loser.”

🍸

“He told you to trust him, and that’s what you did,’ he insists. ‘That’s what you’re supposed to be able to do with people you love. They just don’t always live up to it.”

🍸

“To me, libraries have always represented the best of humanity. The way we all share knowledge and space, and . . . and how we find ways to look after each other. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s powerful.”

🍸

“But after a while, someone either finally sees you or they don’t, and either way it fucking sucks. Because if they see you, and it’s not what they signed up for, then they’re out of there. And if they never see you… it’s worse. Because you’re just alone.”

🍸

“Miles grins and high-fives me.
“Are we evil or just immature?” he says.
“I think maybe just bitter,” I reply.”

🍸

“You’re the reason for the word wonderful. It really shouldn’t be used for anything else.”

🍸

“Things go smoother if you don’t let people get a rise out of you,” he says. “If you give them control over how you feel, they’ll always use it.”

🍸

“I want to know myself, to test my edges and see where I stop and the rest of the world begins.”

🍸

“I love you in a way that feels brand-new. You make every single thing that went wrong feel like it was just a step in the right direction, and it—it makes me excited. For life to keep surprising me. “You aren’t what I pictured,” I say. “You are so, so, so much better than what my cynical little brain could’ve ever come up with.”

---

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK? WHAT DID YOU THINK? WHICH IS YOUR FAVOURITE EMHEN BOOK? I’D LOVE TO KNOW!