Antonia Bernardin

The 33rd book I read this year was Happy Place by Emily Henry. I read this during my absolute nightmare flight on my way to go on holiday, so it definitely helped remind me to think of my happy place whilst trapped on a plane for 5.5 hours.

A summary attempt

Harriet met her two best friends in college and from there their little group grew to include their flatmates, who later became their boyfriends and one of the girl’s girlfriend. Every year they take a summer trip to one of the girl’s lakeside cabin’s, as times have changed this trip has started to become the only time they all get together and it is Harriet’s happy place. Except this year things are different, because Harriet and Wyn are about to ruin the group dynamic by announcing their breakup. Harriet, who is barely surviving her residency, asked him to hold off on telling their friends and to tell let her join the yearly trip alone and tell them then. Except when she arrives it’s to be ambushed by Wyn and an announcement: her friend’s dad is selling the lake house and her friend plans to get married with just the 6 of them to witness, to give the house one big farewell.

Not wanting to ruin her friend’s big week, Harriet swears Wyn to secrecy for one more week but this means they’ll be sharing a room and playing the part of a happy couple. All the secrets Harriet is keeping threaten to crush her as she tries to smile through the week, her happy place failing to have its usual affect on her. She still doesn’t know why Wyn broke up with her, something is going on with her other friend and she’s coming to the crushing realisation that medicine might not be the right path for her. Everything is changing.

What did I think?

Firstly, as a millennial whose friends are hitting 30 and are starting to transition away from the way our relationships worked and what we considered fun in our 20’s, this book felt very real. This book was full of heartache, loneliness and the bleak realities of being utterly skint despite having good qualifications and good jobs, which I think captures the millennial spirit quite well too. I also think it was a well done second chance style romance, except it was just life changing and its challenges that pushed them apart. I also appreciated how shit was resolved by them just having a fucking honest conversation, which is my main bug bear with romance books, as they rely too heavily on the miscommunication trope a lot of the time.

I still think that Book Lovers is my favourite Emily Henry book but I did really enjoy this one, it was perhaps a tad more emotional than I needed whilst being trapped on a plane but still, lucky I’m good at crying subtly.