Another instant classic from Emily Henry. This book will please both fans of Henry and newcomers alike.

Harriet and Wyn broke up several months ago, but they haven't told their best friends. At the annual (and possibly last) summer gathering at the cottage in Maine, they are doing their best to fake it. The book also flashes back to tell the story of how they met and originally fell in love. I appreciated that the book did not gloss over that relationships (both romantic and platonic) are hard even when the people seem perfect. In order to make them work, you have to make difficult sacrifices. To be honest, I was a bit thrown by the decisions that Harriet made at the end, but it was an overall great book.

Harriet is caught between her happy place - one with all her friends and Wyn - and her unhappy place, where everything falls apart. She and her friends are getting together for their annual Maine vacation at her friend Sabrina’s house. But it turns out that they are all hiding something and not being completely honest with one another. Harriet, Sabrina, and Cleo have an untreatable bond. They met in college where they were roommates and fast friends, but when everyone goes their separate ways, it gets harder to maintain their friendship and be honest with one another. Happy Place was a good book, and I mostly liked it. It was slow at times and there are a lot of time jumps back and forth. I loved what good friends Sabrina, Cleo, & Harriet were to one another. They don’t want their differences and changed lives to ruin their close bond even when life changes and changes them.

Thank you to NetGalley and he publisher for the advance copy. All opinions ar my own.

A fun addition to the Emily Henry book universe. I love that this book focuses on friendships and how things change throughout our lives. And who doesn't love a summer cabin story!

This was an amazing read, I love Emily Henry’s work so much! Her descriptions and and character growth is amazing! Another banger!

Emily Henry knocks it out of the park again! Harriet and Wyn have always been meant to be - until they weren't. But now they've found themselves on a vacation with their college friend group, and feel like they can't tell anyone they've broken up. They're stuck pretending they're still in love for their week-long vacation. Of course, the tension is high, the "sharing the same hotel with only one bed" trope is in full force, and readers will be dying to know what split these two up in the first place. Fans of Emily Henry will be delighted - a perfect summer read!

Another solid book by Emily Henry! I especially loved the dynamic of the friend group, honestly more than the central relationship between Harriet and Wyn. I wouldn't say this is my favorite by this author, but definitely a fun beach read.

The writing of Emily Henry is amazing. She creates characters that seem genuine and kind. Not only does Happy Place follow Harriet and Wyn, but also their four closest pals. A story of love, friendship, and personal development.

I was quite happy with the conclusion, but there were some tense and confusing scenes in the middle. I'm not sure why, but this seemed to me to be less of a romance than her earlier books. Although it's not my favorite of hers, I enjoyed and found it to be captivating. I adored the book's setting and the friend group in particular.

This is a fun book with some serious overtones, but in the end (just from the cover) the reader knows it is going to come out ok--although maybe not how you might think... The six characters are all likeable, I personally loved Kimmy, I think they all played off each other well. Their "adventures" were sometimes kind of funny which brought some humor into the book, which was helpful as the premise, saying good-bye to a beloved vacation home, the break up of Wyn and Harriet, the bad feelings between Cleo and Sabrina and all the secrets that went with the six of them is kind of sad. My only complaint is that I think the book was a bit too long--it is very clear that Harriet and Wyn love each other, belong together, and will eventually be together, so sometimes I just wanted to say "get on with it". But all in all it wa a delightful summer read.

This is a second chance romance, kind of. Harriet and Wyn have been together forever (8 years? I don't remember, some long length of time). They are engaged but have yet to set a wedding date. Then Wyn breaks up with Harriet for seemingly no reason. She's angry, but alas... the root of the problem: they don't communicate.

For a couple that has been together for so long, I don't understand how they constantly made so many assumptions about each other. I don't understand how you have a phone call that lasts less than five minutes and that is how you end an 8 year relationship. And I don't understand, as a female, how you don't immediately turn to your best friends when that happens.

So while I like Emily Henry's writing, the plot line was tough to swallow. Her characters are usually witty and funny, and this was no exception. I think the secondary characters could have been developed a bit more, but the focus was on Harriet, which makes sense.

Overall, it was a light book with a slightly different romance plot than usual, but nothing remarkable.

Emily Henry is one of my most recommended authors--for romance lovers, for beach reads (ha), for people just getting back into reading for fun. That said, I probably wouldn't start by recommending this book. It didn't quite have the pacing or developments of her other books (which are otherwise winners), so it's hard for Happy Place to compete. If you like introspective, meditating, witty "love stories," for Grown Ups, you might find more enjoyment than I did.

Have you ever delayed sharing news because you don’t want to ruin an event or outing? Or maybe because you honestly are avoiding the drama that will come with sharing it? Sometimes it can seem easier to just pretend things are ok than it is to face the questions and reality we are avoiding. That is exactly where Win and Harriet find themselves in Emily Henry’s latest contemporary romance, Happy Place. With more tension and angst than I expected, this is another hit from the well-deservedly titled beach read queen!

Characters

Harriet “Harry” Kilpatrick is in her medical residency in the present time. She has parents who put pressure on her to go down the path she is on for her career, but Harry isn’t happy. Wyn Connor broke off their engagement about 6 months before the present timeline. He lives in Montana and the two met when he was roommates with her friend from college Sabrina.

Harry met her best friends Sabrina and Cleo in college. Sabrina was born and raised in Manhattan to parents whose marriage didn’t work out. She is engaged to attorney Parth in the present time, who is best friends with Wyn. Cleo is a painter who grew up in New Orleans and is in a relationship with Kimmy, a tattoed strawberry blond with an infectious laugh.

My Thoughts

A hallmark of Emily Henry that I’ve come to love is tension building through past and present timelines where the reader knows that something has occurred to fundamentally change the central relationship, but we don’t know what that is until we get to the big scene where the two timelines meet. Happy Place is no exception, and this was plotted and executed to perfection.

In the present, we know that Harriet and Wyn are broken up for months but haven’t told their friends. The close knit group take an annual trip together to Sabrina’s family vacation home in Maine for a decade, and the week is spent with good food, good drinks, salty coastal air, and memorable nights. When they arrive they learn two things: Sabrina’s dad is selling the cottage, and Sabrina and Parth have decided to get married on this trip. Harry and Wyn realize they can’t tell anyone about their break up and ruin the week, especially since Sabrina is so scared to get married after her parent’s unhappy marriage.

The book weaves back and forth in time, so we see Wyn and Harry meet and fall in love. Meanwhile in the present Harry is heartbroken, forced to stay in the same room with Wyn and confront all of their old feelings. The dichotomy between the two timelines is stark. Their love story is so heart-warming and it makes their current state even more sad.

This story had a mash up of tropes: friends-to-lovers, lovers-to-enemies, fake relationship, and second chance love. These all occur in the same central couple and while that seems like it would be convoluted, they actually work so well with Henry’s story telling. I usually think fake relationship is the worst trope because it rarely makes sense and seems shallow, but here because these are people who shared part of their life together, it really put a spotlight on their emotions in a highly effective way.

I often shy away from books described as “emotional” because I think people usually mean sad, and I’m too much of a softie for sad books. But emotional is exactly how I’d describe this in a good way. I wouldn’t say it is sad, but it feels raw and sort of melancholic. Harry and Wyn had a love story for the ages, but now it may be over. As they work through that, this is also a book about finding what makes you happy and taking a chance on it, even if it isn’t the thing you thought would make you happy.

Obviously with the genre you can expect the ending to be on a positive note (thank goodness!) but it didn’t come together the way I expected and I mean that as a huge compliment to Emily Henry and this story.

A beautiful and compelling story about finding our happiness in life, whatever that means.

I like Emily Henry (Beach Read was my favorite). This one seemed drawn out to me? I do like that they made the guy the one who saw a therapist etc. And I liked the friend element. But not my favorite. Loved the destination though. It would be my Happy Place too.

I didn’t really like this. It was boring and sad until the last 40 pages when truths finally started to come out.
The constant lies and miscommunications felt cheap and immature. These flat characters are in their thirties and act like they’re 14 and are embarrassed to be open with each other. It was irritating and overdone. I would’ve loved this is everyone had been honest from the start and it had been a real bonding friendship trip, instead of this gloomy trip down a sad memory lane.

I expected this happy, funny, endearing read about friends on one last vacation and a fake dating couple, and instead I got meh and deceptions. Cleo was the only interesting character, and she was hardly even in it.

This felt like it was trying to be a literary fiction romance, and it just fell so short for me. Ugh

So good, if you’re familiar with Emily Henry this will be another book of hers you’ll love. This book delves into friendships and romance and loved the balance.

The saccharine levels were off the charts! So earnest, so tooth-achingly sweet, without a whole lot of intellectual complexity. Not exactly the swoon worthy romantic journey I was hoping for.

As always, Emily Henry is a must read for me. This was a Taylor Swift song in book format, and judging from other reviews I am not the only one who feels that way.

Emily Henry books just gut-punch you in the best possible way. I spent the last quarter of the book gasping at every unfolding revelation (emotional and plot-wise) and sobbing into my Kindle over how perfectly, beautifully inevitable it all felt. There's so much to dig into here: the evolution of friendship dynamics, how our upbringings and earliest representations of love shape us, the weight of familial expectations, how our wants and needs shift as our lives mature. And of course, the romance, which ties it all together. Maybe more than any other couple in Henry's books, I felt like I knew Harry and Wyn inside out by the end of the book, which is perhaps why finishing their story was so heart-wrenching.

This book was fabulous. I'm just so so happy with it. As soon as I started it I knew it was going to be amazing, perfect even, and it truly met my expectations. Emily Henry is a genius, a banter queen, a romance goddess, a dialogue expert. I read her books and I laugh out loud. I cry. I smile. I wanna talk to everyone about even though nobody knows what's going on. I love her and her books so much.

This particular book made me so happy because of the friend group dynamics. There is just something magical about a group of adult friends spending time together and reminiscing about the past. Reliving all their memories and inside jokes. It just made me feel so nostalgic.

I absolutely loved the going back and forth between the past and present. It brought us lots of info on their relationship and what happened. Emily is big on giving us all the tiny little bits about each of them, things we don't *need* to know, but as we read, we realize it makes us know them better, understand them better, and love them too. It makes us understand why they feel the way they do for each other. That's what she does in all her books. She puts in all the details, and it makes all the difference.

Reread #1
DYING this book is so good. I just listened to an ALC and I'm still so in love, I can't wait for people to read this book. To be able to talk about it. I already can't wait for the next Emily Henry.

Okay, I was terrified to read this book. Emily Henry’s books are some of my favorites, and from the reviews I’d seen online, Happy Place has been pretty polarizing. Now that I’ve finished it, I think I get it.

If you did not enjoy the timeline structure of People We Meet on Vacation, I’m confident that Happy Place is not for you. However, there are a few more qualifiers than that. I enjoyed Happy Place because I have my own wack-a-doodle friend group that has transcended time and space, but still suffers from growing pains. Henry’s writing about that felt so earnest, and it added a lot for me. If your friend group does not suffer from these ailments, you might read this book and think “get your shit together.”

I also really appreciated her depiction of depression in a long term relationship. It’s not alway fair, and it’s not always logical, and for me, that all felt very realistic.

Is this book for everyone? Nah. It’s not Emily Henry’s most universal book. But that didn’t stop me from loving the majority of it wholeheartedly.