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!

Let me start off by saying that even though I love romance in many forms, this is not the type of book that I normally like. The fact that it was so unexpectedly enjoyable and engaging speaks to the author's ability to write excellent characters and surprise you with their depth and interweaving histories. I usually get bored with forced proximity/fake dating tropes unless it's like a reality TV thing, but Emily Henry has made me re-evaluate that position for sure!

The cover of Happy Place is gorgeous and was one of the things that drew me to it when I requested it on NetGalley, but it didn't prepare me for how serious some parts of the book were. I thought it was going to be a fun, but fluffy romance read- I was so very wrong. There was a lot of fun, but even more depth than I expected as the author excavated what female friendships, aging, choosing what feels right to you instead of what you should do per societal standards, and truly evaluating the efficacy and importance of romantic relationships look like in 2023. All of the characters are young, but the aging aspect specifically peered into how friendships change as one grows out of college age into adulthood where lives often go in very different directions. (Think mid-twenties to early 30s when people are settling on careers and deciding if they want kids.)

Our two main characters, Harriet (Harry) and Wyn have broken up months prior to the friend's trip they are both invited to attend with their old university besties. The problem is that they have not told anyone about the breakup, and Harriet does not have the heart to tell her friends since she is still very much grieving the loss of the relationship. As the story progresses, the two MCs are forced to explore their relationship in depth as the complexities of adult friendship also rise to the surface. Harriet is in medical school but finds that she desires a life with fewer time constraints and with more availability to do what she loves- create art. Her fear of her family's judgment, grief over her failed romantic relationship, and the stress of putting on a "good show" for her friends force Harriet to come face to face with the question that plagues many people in young adulthood: Should I do what is stable and expected of me, or should I take the risk of acting on what brings me joy?

The characters are very compelling, and even though there is plenty of fun banter among all the characters, Emily Henry does not shy away from prying back the layers of social programming and exploring how authenticity emerges when we have the bravery to face who we really are. All in all, it was not what I expected from a book with a bright (gorgeous) pink cover with a bunch of people lounging and playing on the water! Not that pink indicates a lack of depth, but on romance books, it is something I usually correlate to something like a rom-com. There was humor injected throughout the book, but I was pleasantly surprised by the author's willingness to look at life "as it is" as well. I loved everything about Happy Place and truly enjoyed the development afforded to the side characters. The ending is fully satisfying, and I can officially call myself an Emily Henry fan!

Thank you so much to NetGalley, Emily Henry, and Penguin Random House- Berkley for sending me an e-ARC of Happy Place! Given how much everyone enjoyed Book Lovers last year, I think that this is going to be the next contemporary romance "it" book!

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for allowing me an ARC copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

One week in a nostalgic location with all of the people who know you best – including your fiancé whom no one knows you aren’t engaged to anymore. What could go wrong?

When Harriet steps off the plane in Maine, she is ready to be in her happy place. Sabrina, her best friend and college roommate, has had her and their triomate Cleo out to her family cottage every year since Harriet could remember. She is expecting relaxation and peace from the growing disdain she has for her work back in San Francisco. What she is not expecting is for her fiancé Wyn to already be at the house with a plan to keep their breakup under wraps. Armed with months of resentment, Harriet is determined not to let this, or him, ruin her annual bonding experience. As the week goes on, Harriet and Wyn are forced to reminisce about their relationship over the years. They begin to realize that for every sacrifice they made in the name of love, they only added a dagger to the others heart. When their friends start to feel the tension bleed, Harriet and Wyn must decide how far they are willing to build their walls up before everything comes crumbling down.

This book was everything that I love in a romance novel. Miscommunication, forced proximity, separate trauma/shared trauma, child of expectation, found family, teased spice. It had it all. I blazed through this because I desperately needed to know if Harriet and Wyn got their shit together and had a real conversation. As a child of expectation, I understood Harriet’s trauma of needing to do the right thing and how that bled into her requirement of being a perfect/needless partner. I was just as much in love with Sabrina/Harriet/Cleo’s love story as I was the romantic one. They found each other when they needed it most and they swore their love forever. Adult relationships are hard. I loved that Henry showed all of their imperfect vulnerabilities and how they leaned on each other to heal.

Emily Henry would write a story about a trash goblin falling in love with a dust bunny and I would find a way to get my hands on it. The way she writes about her characters elicits such familiarity that you feel a pull to their story and that is magic. To keep us turning every page for just a glimpse more into the story of others. To feel something in ourselves along the way.

Happy Place is a exes to lovers, second chance romance.

Emily Henry delivers a story of a couple who break up after almost a decade of loving each other, only to realize the flame they have is still there. There isn't one big reason the couple is no longer together, rather a cluster of reasons that were never spoken about during their time together. These ex lovers are brought back together when they're forced to spend an entire week with their closest friends. All of whom don't know the love birds have drifted apart. For the entire week, Wyn and Harriet must pretend their relationship is still close to avoid spoiling the wedding occurring at the end of the vacation. The tension is thick.

Our main character, Harriet, is very relatable. Even if you don't love her, you can't help but understand her. She comes from a difficult family dynamic, struggles with expressing herself (even with loved ones), and never learned how to fight with loved ones in a healthy manner. Harriet learned from a young age to avoid conflict, she must be an easy person to be around. As an adult, she eventually realizes how avoiding conflict her whole life has only caused strain with those closest to her.

Our love interest, Wyn, is a kind and soft soul. A rancher and furniture mender from Montana. He is the one who ended things with our mc, yet seems to be as in love as ever. Wyn ended things in a 4 minute phone call and immediately shipped Harriet all of her belongings back to her. Now that they're close together for a week long vacation before the vacation house is sold, Harriet wants to know: "why?".

I absolutely loved Wyn and Harriet's relationship because it was very real as well as their conflicts are. This story is one of inspiration, mental illness, growth, adult friendships, grief, career discomfort, etc.

Thank you, NetGalley, Emily Henry, and Berkley for an eARC.

Emily Henry books are becoming MY happy place. This has everything you would expect from a Henry novel-- romance, humor, summertime vibes and a strong sense of setting. It was a good read.
That being said, I wouldn't call this Henry's best work. The main character, Harriet, feels real enough, and I enjoy that this romance focuses on an existing relationship. But the stakes never felt high enough. It takes a long time to understand how the couple broke up, and even then it doesn't make a lot of sense. However, it did feel more true-to-life that way. Break-ups aren't always about infidelity or unhappiness with your partner, but sometimes simply reflect the struggles a person is having as an individual, which flows over and taints a relationship. I thought that felt very real, if a bit frustrating as a plot element.
My other criticism is that the cast of characters is fairly large, but most of them never feel like more than placeholders. As somebody who adores the "found family" trope, I kept waiting to feel more connected to the group of friends, but that never materialized, and because of this the climax of the book wasn't as emotionally satisfying as it could have been.
Overall, I would say this book was 3.75/5. Even Henry's lesser books are better than most others in the genre!