The novel opens with our narrator, Harriet Kilpatrick, en route to her annual week-long excursion to fictional Knott's Harbor, Maine for their Lobster Fest. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most. and i’m convinced harry has some kind of coke problem we don’t know about because NO ONE SNIFFS THAT MUCH. She is an absolute artist with her words, the way she can summon the perfect measure of every emotion into every page is stunning and so rare. Which is how they end up sharing the master bedroom at the cottage that has been their yearly getaway with their best friends for the past decade.

wyn is such a pos, you can't convince me this man loved her for a single sec, they were together for almost 10 years and he broke up with her over the phone? My dream was to become a neurosurgeon, so I was speechless and almost screaming like Regina George in Mean Girls). Like with all of Henry's novels, Happy Place has the trademark witty banter and humor I've come to expect (and, it turns out, I can start to predict -- I was completing punchlines for characters while listening to the audio book). It s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses).I’ve read a few of this author’s novels now and whilst this was my least favourite, it’s still a nice read.

but it was 400 pages long and when she’s being annoying for 350 of them, “occasionally” doesn’t cut it. I really really really tried to like him for the first 150 pages or so BUT PICKING A SIDE TABLE MADE OUT OF SHOE BOXES (thank u for reminding me rasa) FROM THE SIDE OF THE ROAD WAS MY LAST STRAW.Which is how they find themselves sharing a bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group s yearly getaway for the last decade.

It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). wyn and harriet were so torn up over each other, but they are so bad at communicating their vulnerability to one another. Even though I'm not a romance reader, I really liked Book Lovers and Beach Read because the characters were emotionally mature and the plot didn't rely on miscommunication.we see them both focus on their self-growth and healing, but seeing harriet go through her self-discovery journey and then finding her way back to wyn has me in my feels rn, it just felt so real. Plot twist: deep down, I'm a hopeless romantic who yearns to love and be loved for a really long time and to be in a healthy relationship, but that's not gonna happen, so). And so perhaps it was my tempered expectations going in, but Happy Place turned out to be a very happy surprise for me. like you think you can promise the universe something and prevent the inevitable but of course you can’t. i just love the way EH handles mental health topics and always manages to give so much emotional depth to her characters.

As someone who graduated college a few years ago, has felt the sadness of friends moving away and drifting apart, and looked back on my own happy place moments that feel too far in the past, this book HIT. This should've been a sign for me to stop reading it *sighs* I should've known at this point that he'd be a loser. Trust Emily Henry to take the fake dating trope to another level with the messy complex history these two share and the spiralling lies.

not so much a huge rom com like her other books but it’s much more mature and melancholy and UGH there are some passages i teared up at. harriet has a tendency to push everyone away, including wyn; and wyn has a tendency to worry and overthink things—which in time ended up clashing together but it was handled so immaculately, i found it bearable and i just wanted to see them both get their happy ending. i have read and rated all of her adult romances 5 stars because of her ability to