Danielle's Reviews > Happy Place

This is Emily Henry's most joyful looking cover to date, for the saddest book I've read by her.

Harriet, a surgical resident, and her college best friends, Cleo and Sabrina, are going on their annual vacation to Sabrina's family vacation home in Maine. This is their happy place. They look forward to it every year and they can really unwind together and be themselves.

Sabrina breaks the bad news when they get there that it will be their final summer there because her family is selling the house. She wanted all hands on deck for this so Wyn shows up. Wyn is Harriet's ex and a major part of the friend group so they were dividing shindigs with the friends like kids in a divorce. This throws a wrench into that.

They don't want to spoil the last hurrah so they decide to pretend they never broke up, but they're not the only duo in the squad keeping secrets this year and everyone is distracted by something. Can they pull off pretending to still be together? Will they get back together? It's only a week or so! What could go wrong?

This almost scared me away at the start because of all the characters. Our narrator is just Harriet but we have 6 friends in total and it's a little hard to see everyone as individuals at first but I held on and I'm glad I did. I shouldn't have doubted that Henry would create beautiful, flawed characters that you wanted to know.

This was also sadder and more stressful than her other books that I've read. I was really shocked how emotional I felt, which is good to be able to get that out of people, but I wasn't expecting my heartstrings to be tugged for so long in so many different ways. Happiness, nostalgia, grief, jealousy, resignation. So many emotions going on here.

It also reminded me a bit of an Ali Hazelwood novel with the science side to Harriet. Equating emotions to chemical reactions and other various things throughout the book to show her commitment to the medical field. I do appreciate her education and I'm not sure I really loved the message sent in this one because it felt kinda Hallmark-y but it was sweet and funny. I always love her books.