Quick read. Didn't like it as much as Book Lovers. The characters were a little bland, but it had a nice ending.

this review will be chaotic and have absolutely no coherency so prepare yourself now.
beautiful. stunning, flawless. perfect. a million other adjectives.
emily henry is one of my all time favorite authors and happy place did not disappoint. second chance exes to lovers with fake dating? one bed trope? with a quirky small town setting?
every moment of this book was fantastic. i read it so quickly and wish there were 100 more pages of harriet and wyn.
this book also has fantastic mental health representation!!!
favorite quotes (that don't spoil anything i promise)
- "I stuff my hands in my pockets. Very natural. Just a girl with her fists in her tiny, useless women's shorts pockets"
- "You don't date your friend? Who do you date, Wyn? Enemies? Strangers? Malevolent spirits who died in your apartment building?"
- "Did you suffer some kind of coffee-table-book related trauma in the last five months?"
- "Just because he's a pilot doens't mean he's not a ghost
- "That's how they decide who gets into medical school. You stand in front of a committee of doctors and count as high as you can."

Yay! Emily Henry is back on her game with Happy Place. Really enjoyed the long time friend group dynamic, Maine setting, and the romance felt fairly authentic as well. Will definitely recommend.

Once again readers are gifted with a novel of dynamic and relatable characters, almost lyrical prose, and a couple you root for from the get-go. Happy Place introduces a long-time friend group working through its evolution as all involved grow and change as people hit the beginnings of middle age. The story is centered around Harriet and Wyn who are the perfect couple...until they're not. I genuinely appreciate Emily Henry's portrayal of depression in its different iterations, that not all paths to happily ever after are easy (and sometimes a step back is warranted), and that the family we choose can still be messy.

Pre-order, be ready to laugh, cry, and reflect. I demolished this book in a day because Emily Henry delivered another winner!

NetGalley provided the advanced copy, opinions are 100% my own.

I was SO excited to be reading another Emily Henry book! This one is a second chance romance- which actually aren't my favorite. BUT, leave it to Emily Henry to have me really enjoy her version of the trope. Harriet and Wyn have been a couple since college and their friend group expects them to still be together. Sadly, they've grown apart so have broken up. I immediately shipped them and wanted them back together. You could FEEL their love for each other still. They fake being together to appease the friends but of course there are real feelings still there. This one was a quick and passionate read with many ups and downs. Another page turner and highly enjoyable and engaging.

I really wanted to love this book. Emily Henry is one of my absolute favorite authors, but this book missed the mark for me. I will start with the things I liked. I think her writing is wonderful, as usual. I liked how she wove in the discussion of mental health and medical treatment of depression. I liked the chemistry between Harriet and Wyn, I thought their actual romantic relationship was believable.
Here was what I did not like. As someone who is in the healthcare field, it was hard to suspend my disbelief and believe that Harriet would 1) go into Neurosurgery because that’s what she thought people wanted her to do and 2) would give up on the career she spent years of her life working toward and put hundreds of thousands of dollars toward go go and become a potter in Montana. I also found Sabrina to be a bit overbearing and that her actions actually hurt the story line.
Overall, this was an okay read, I would recommend it to people who do not work in the field of healthcare who could overlook some of the issues with Harriet’s character arc.

A beach house full of memories, a trip with best friends, and one last chance to be with the man of your dreams? Emily Henry brings the heat again in her latest -- the perfect summer read for any hopeless romantic.

4.75⭐️- emily henry does it again! i loved the concept of this book & the characters as well as the depression rep. this was so good and i highly recommend especially if you’re an emily henry fan! a super fun read especially for summer

I alway enjoy Emily Henry and her newest does not disappoint. Happy Place is full of witty banter and a fun read. It is also full of late twenties angst, set in a gorgeous town, and has scenes in a book shop and coffee shop- similar to Book Lovers. If you are a fan you will enjoy!

I really, really enjoyed this ARC of Happy Place. The story is just lovely, with six friends from high school/college getting together for one last hurrah at a special house before it is sold. We don't find out until near the end of the book who-knew-what-about-whom, and that was a nice surprise. The main couple, Harriet and Wyn, just stole my heart and I rooted for them from the outset.

This book really kept me reading…interesting, loveable characters you really root for, cozy settings, some laughs and plenty of moments to tug at the heartstrings. I’ll definitely be recommending this to lots of customers this summer!

A tight-knit group of friends vacation together for one last time at their favorite vacation spot in this latest contemporary romance by Emily Henry. I'm a big fan of Emily Henry's book's so when I saw this one pop up on NetGalley I was pretty excited! For the most part, I wasn't disappointed.
In this book, 6 friends are vacationing at a family member's vacation house for one last time before it's sold off. The group of friends had been best friends in college but now that they've moved on with their lives, things between them have begun to change. The biggest change is that two of the friends- Harry and Wyn- have broken up, but haven't told anyone yet. They're forced to play nice and act like they're still together so that they don't ruin the vacation fun.
As expected from an Emily Henry book, there's romance, drama, and humor in this book. However, there was also a ton of angst. I expected some, since we know that the two main characters are no longer together going into the story, but she really leaned heavily on it for this book, making it a bit of a downer. In addition to that, just as friendships change as life circumstances change and people grow older, the friend group drama is also full of angst.
In the end, it was still an enjoyable and well-written read, and it did get touching at moments. I was rooting for the friend group to stay together and for Harry and Wyn to get back together throughout the story. I just wish that, for a book with "happy" in the title, the book had been a bit happier. 3.5 stars rounded to 4 since this was still a good book even though it wasn't my favorite Emily Henry book.

I want to preface this review by saying that if you go into this expecting that signature Emily Henry rom-com style, you're going to get it. This book has a cute romance, a really fantastic group of side characters, a great balance of light and hard topics, and a great setting that you can sort of get lost in. It's Emily Henry's formula and it will work for a lot of people. Unfortunately, it wasn't my perfect read.

So this book follows our main character, Harriet, who is meeting up with all of her best friends from college for their annual summer trip. She hasn't seen anything in several months and the trip is long overdue. Unfortunately, she and her boyfriend (another member of the friend group) have recently broken up and have not told their friends about it yet. This leads to a week of them having to pretend to still be a couple for the sake of the trip and their friends, which causes some incredibly awkward tension. It's second-chance romance at its finest.

My main problem with this book is that it is dripping with miscommunication. That is basically the foundation of every single problem this book has. Between Harriet and Wyn, between Harriet and her friends, between Harriet and her parents. I knew that it was going to be a less than ideal read when, 25% of the way into the book, I was screaming for these people to just sit down and have an adult conversation. 99% of all the problems could have been solved if these people just talked to each other and were honest about what was going on and how they were all feeling. It was so hard to keep reading this book knowing that one adult conversation would solve everything.

My other main issue with it was the main character seemed to have basically no agency in her own life and it takes way too long for her to come to terms with that. I get parental and societal pressure, trust me. But Harriet just let everything happen to her and never reacted in any real human way. Also, I don't necessarily feel like I got to know any of the characters one any kind of deep level other than how important this friendship group is to them. It left a lot to be desired on the character development front. And it really felt like there was a missed opportunity to have a much deeper conversation about mental health and grief and the toll it takes on our lives. Overall, I just wanted so much more from this book.

I still love Emily Henry and I will continue to read her books. But unfortunately, this was my least favorite so far. It just had so much more potential and it didn't live up to it for me.

Honestly - my favorite story from Emily Henry. I’m not a big fan of second chance romances, but she made me fall in love with Harriet & Wyn.

I absolutely loved the characters and Harriet’s development over the course of the book was *chef’s kiss*.

Emily can do no wrong in my eyes.

This book, like the other books I have read from this author, has a romance that is compelling and the characters feel like real people the reader can talk to in real life and get to know. The themes in this book was so well executed with the concept of what a happy place was and how your closest relationships factor into those happy memories.

The second chance romance doesn't feel unnatural and I didn't have a hard time believing that the two characters would have a hard time getting back together. With second chance romances, it's hard to believe the characters would get back together and there's usually a rewriting of the series of events that would've been solved so easily if they say down to talk. Especially if the reason for break up is cheating which just makes it even harder for me to personally root for the characters. But with Happy Place, there isn't a rewriting of the series of events for the characters' past but rather a gap and sort of a guessing game as to why they really broke up. There are hints and a build up to the reveal which makes everything click together and makes the resolution so satisfying. It felt like a real adult relationship with hard decisions that had to be made.

The friend group was also very well fleshed out. They had their own motivations and heartaches and they are not ignored in favour of the romance plot which makes it so much more enjoyable for me. Each mishap involving the friend group only made me gasp and worry about how it would end. The friendship between the friends actually felt real and they genuinely care for each other which is what I expect when friends are present in romance books.

This book had me crying at certain points and had me glued to my seat for hours and I highly recommend it for those that love to read women's fiction with second chance romances.

“And then I met you, and I didn’t feel so lost or aimless. Because even if there was nothing else for me, it felt like loving you was what I was made for.”

I’m debating between 3.5 and 4 stars, but I think I will settle for 4 stars because I can honestly feel the passion emily Henry was going for in this story.

ALOT better than book lovers…NOT better than beach read.

To be completely honest I feel like this kind of story would be way better done as a movie than a book in the best way possible.

I do have a few qualms I wanted to talk about so I’ll be splitting this review between my likes and dislikes.

Likes:👍
-I love the plot idea of a group of friends who grew up together have this one spot made just for them to regroup and catch up on life
-2nd chance romance makes the tension up the ROOF
-I’m so thankful the male love interest was actually in it for more than 60%
-Sabrina’s charcater trying to hold on to this friendship made her my fave
-the realism of the story and the factors that come along with have an adult life
-the meaning behind the title ‘happy place’ made me emotional
-it’s focused on the characters emotions

Dislikes:👎
- a small critique I have over Emily Henry’s writing is that you can never tell between past and present. I can tell she likes to make her stories unique and quirky compared to others, but I would just like for her to jump straight to the point. She’s never able to create “5 years ago” or just set some date of where and when it’s taking place. One chapters ur in the present and suddenly the next your in the past and it just gets it so confusing because their not far from their current age so u need to read more into the chapter to know it’s the past. Especially when you wrote in first person. This sort of time hopping is more made for third person omniscient, and it’s great and cool that the author wants to jump that line..but I think first person really does have limits.

-I really enjoyed wyn and Harriet’s characters, but it would have been better if they focused on themselves more than working on how to get themselves back together. They have their own issues they are trying to work through and I think one step at a time will get them where they want to be. Bit instead it created so much miscommunication when they could have just talked of out.

-single pov. I’m not sure if Emily Henry ever did the perspective of both her characters in her books I don’t remember…but I really think this particular book needed dual pov. Harriet’s pov was SO biased, as it’s supposed to be for first person..but it gets u so stressed out because you actually want to know what the other person is feeling instead of what the narrator is telling you. Wyn was diagnosed with depression and I think having what he was feeling in that moment when he broke up with Harriet and why he TRULY did it, and the things he claimed he did such as constantly texting her when she had his number blocked would have added more emotion.

-groveling. I loved wyn don’t get me wrong, I totally understood what he was going through, but I feel like he didn’t fight harder. Harriet wasn’t perfect and she didn’t realize some of the mistakes she did, but if wyn didn’t tell her what he was feeling she was never going to know. Instead it got her to think about what she had did to ruin the relationship which just created stress on her. There wasn’t a proper trust built between them and I think Harriet deserved him fighting harder cuz me personally would have required him on his knees.

The detailed dislikes makes it seem I hated the book, but I really didn’t😂. I loved it and thought it was so important. When u grow ur with your best friends and try to keep this friendship when ur adults it becomes so hard. I’ve been there trying to hold to something that will just never be the same and I think that’s something we will always try to ignore about ourselves.

Thanks netgalley for the arc.

Such a fun book! The characters and the relationships all felt so real, and I especially loved reading about Harriet's family and conflicting feelings about her career. Some parts felt a little slow (especially with the friend drama), but overall I had a great time reading this. Can't wait for more people to get their hands on this book!

I feel like every other book Henry writes is great, and the off books are meh. This one was a meh. So much angst, so much emoting, it was too much - making the final denouement vaguely unbelievable as far as I was concerned.

Sweet and charming, but incredibly bittersweet. I think this is the hardest romance trope to do right -- second chance romances have to carefully balance realistic reasons for your relationship to end or be in trouble with compelling reasons to reunite, and Happy Place manages to pull it off.

It's official. Emily Henry can do no wrong! The prose, the chemistry, even the side characters...perfection! I will say, this one had a slightly heavier tone than some of her previous books, but it was just as impactful and readable. A true romance queen!