Funny Story by Emily Henry // Book Review

I’m a huge fan of Emily Henry and the newest from her has been such a delight!

Here’s more about Funny Story

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?

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My thoughts

This is the story about Daphne, who just broke up with her fiance because he admitted to being in love with his childhood best friend. With no place to go, she finds herself staying in the super small apartment of her now ex’s new girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend’s house. Yeah, it’s a really weird situation going on here, but when your ex leaves you for someone else and there’s a vacancy in the apartment she was living in, that just makes sense to move right in.

Miles is also going through a breakup. After all, it was his girlfriend that left him for Daphne’s ex and they are both wallowing in the sorrow of their loss in this one. They’re both living in the same apartment together, listening to “All By Myself”, and getting over their exes. So why not fake date each other to make their exes jealous and make a promise to go to the wedding they’ve been invited to together. This is definitely turning out to be quite a funny story.

The thing I love about Emily Henry’s stories is that there’s some “meat to the bones.” Not only is this a romance between two unlikely people who come to know each other through strange circumstances, but it’s also about how we sometimes change ourselves to fit into someone else’s life and how people tend to disappoint you and you can take the high road or the low road and either become a better person or an enbittered person. I think Daphne because the first mostly becausse this is old hat for Daphne. She’s been alone most of her life and even with a caring mother like hers, she wasn’t shielded from the kind of frustrating childhood where you learn the hard way that people leave.

In many ways, I resonated a lot with Daphne. While I wasn’t the one leaving and moving around every few years, I had the uncanny ability to pick the friends who would. So by the time I hit high school, I didn’t really have a strong friend group and most of the people I considered best friends already had other best friends, if that makes sense. Life gets a bit lonely and I did lean on books and TV to be my comfort in times like this. I learned it’s hard for me to trust people to stick around and like Daphne, I don’t expect anyone to. But when Miles comes around and turns out to do exactly the opposite of what Daphne expects, well, I think that’s what sways Daphne.

I wasn’t sure if Miles would turn out to be the kind of romantic protagonist that he turned out to be. He felt…crunchy who loved to do outrageous things like hike big mountains and jump out of airplanes. He seemed the opposite of Daphne, who is more introverted and would much rather spend the evening watching a fun movie at home. So I was pleasantly surprised when I learned more about Miles and the kind of person he is and the life he lived that shaped him to be the man he is today. Again, kudos for Emily Henry for bringing so much life to these characters. Honestly, they’re truly the reason why you want to stick around and read her books. Usually, you end up knowing a lot about one half of the couple and not the other half, but Emily Henry pays attention to both. She makes characters that feel real, that struggle real, and that learn to overcome those struggles together. I mean, isn’t that the point?

I don’t really have anything bad to say about this book. It’s fun, it’s beautiful, it’s sexy, and it leaves readers feeling like they’ve been seen. So yeah, another great job from another great author.