“All those moments throughout the days, weeks, months that don’t get marked on calendars with hand-drawn stars or little stickers. Those are the moments that make a life. Not grand gestures, but mundane details that, over time, accumulate until you have a home, instead of a house. The things that matter.”

Funny Story, by Emily Henry

Summary

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?

My Thoughts

This is my third Emily Henry book on my slow journey to reading all of them, and while it was good, it wasn’t my favorite. That’s not to say that it isn’t a good book, because it is, but I think that she was trying to fit a bit too much into this book and it ends up feeling slightly haphazard as a result. Our characters are Daphne and Miles, roommates after their ex-partners Peter and Petra respectively break up with them and get engaged. It’s a classic run on the trope of guys with a girl best-friend that they swear they aren’t in love with right up until they realize they are. Daphne and Miles are disasters who slowly get to know each other, especially after getting an invitation to Peter and Petra’s wedding (heinous) and ending up in a fake-dating situation. It’s adorable and Henry does an excellent job with the trope and the slow build of Daphne and Miles relationship, especially as they slowly each get over their exes. Miles feels very distinct from Henry’s other men, Gus and Charles, both of whom felt a bit more similar, and I really like that. Similarly, Daphne feels very unique: a buttoned up children’s librarian who moved around a lot as a kid with an absent father who struggles to open up to people but is incredibly close with her mother.

The focus of the story emotionally is not just on Miles and Daphne getting over their exes, but on Daphne’s relationship with her father and how he has hurt her. Her slow journey to healing a bit feels cathartic and real, and well linked to her romance with Miles, which I appreciated. I also appreciated the development of her friendship with her fellow librarian Ashleigh, as well as the acknowledgement that Daphne’s trauma means she isn’t always perfect and will hurt the people around her. The moment when she messes up with Ashleigh, and then genuinely does her best to fix it felt very real, especially as someone who has struggled to open up to her own friends at times. Miles himself feels very real in how he and Daphne grow as people, as well as his own family problems and his relationship with his little sister Julia. He’s the first Emily Henry man who I have seen myself in, even though I usually see myself more in her heroines. The situation with Miles and Henry could not be handled gently, considering the circumstances, and the two very much have to power through it. It is awkward and weird at the beginning, but that makes the chemistry between them feel all the more real as it develops.

However, it felt like Henry was pushing a bit too much in. Apart from the main plot lines, there’s also a random thread Henry brings up with a best friend from college, Sadie, who “chooses” Peter in the breakup, which Daphne thinks about like two times and then it is never discussed until the epilogue. It felt random, and while I know it was meant as a way to expand upon the plot thread about how Daphne has always been a “we” person (either with Sadie or Peter) and she needs to learn to live anad love for herself, this is already shown well through her relationships with Peter and her father, both of whom are more important to the narrative. The friend was frankly unecessary, especially since Daphne’s complicated relationship with friendship dynamics was handled with Ashleigh, and it isn’t even resolved until the epilogue, when we are told about it happening off-screen during the time-skip to the epilogue. The book would have been much stronger without it, but it is regardless an excellent novel. I definitely recommend for the romance lover.

Review: ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ ⚫

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