Book Review: Funny Story by Emily Henry

I finished this book in two whole days. Two days!!!! As someone who takes a week to finish one book, it’s astonishing that I finished this one in two days. This has been one of my most anticipated reads in 2024—like everyone else—and I’m incredibly excited to share my review with you all.

Synopsis:

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 Review:

Where do I start with this review?! Like I said, this was one of my most anticipated reads of the year—and it did not disappoint. Emily Henry knows how to write good characters—especially the male main character’s POV, but not directly from his POV. She writes as if we’re in his brain, but from the female main character’s POV. As I was reading, I could’ve sworn I was understanding Miles’s (the MMC) perspective. I wanted to know more about him. More about his family, more about his relationship troubles (especially with his ex-fiancee, Petra, part of the catalyst that started this whole story), and more about his life growing up. We did get a lot of that, but I loved Miles so much that I would read a prequel about him. Is it fair to say that he’s my favorite book boyfriend written by Emily Henry? Absolutely. By far.

Side note: While I wanted to know Miles’s POV, I think that may have altered the plot and the character growth in the book, specifically Daphne’s character growth. By focusing on Daphne’s POV, and only her POV, it allowed the story to focus more on her. Still, I think that Emily Henry does an excellent job of putting the reader in the mind of the MMC’s POV without actually writing his POV.

The way Emily Henry wrote Daphne, however. First, I loved her as a librarian! It was so much fun reading about a librarian’s job. Daphne also has a tendency to organize everything and fall into those habits—a stark opposite than her love interest, Miles. Their pairing was a good balance—he was a laid back, easygoing type of guy (everyone loved him) and she is more of a loner type (she wishes not to be), and more organized and put-together. Their opposite personalities weren’t a huge factor in the book, but it definitely played into their banter. We also read that Daphne, being raised by a single mom and whose dad was in and out of the picture and unreliable, was looking for stability in her relationship, specifically her relationship with Peter. Peter was giving her all of that, until…

The book follows Daphne following her breakup with her fiance, Peter. Peter dumped Daphne for Miles’s ex-fiancee, Petra, who is Peter’s childhood best friend. Daphne, with no place to go, because she knows no one outside her relationship with Peter (and all of their friends were Peter’s to begin with), moves in with Miles, who is still heartbroken over his own relationship ending. One night, they spontaneously decide to “fake date” to make their exes jealous, who very recently announced they’re getting married. The fake dating trope in this book was very subtle—they pretended to date in public, when their exes were around, but there weren’t a lot of times where they had to pretend. They were more friends than anything, and denying the fact that they were in a relationship because they didn’t want to lie. Still, the book had their funny—and romantic—fake dating moments.

Fake dating is a favorite trope of mine, but I also really love the friends-to-lovers trope, and this one had it and did it so well (I mean, this is the same author who wrote People We Meet On Vacation, so obviously). Daphne knew no one in town other than the friends she made with Peter, and those friends “sided” with Peter and ignored Daphne. On the verge of moving back to live closer to her mother on the East Coast, Daphne had a decision to make. Move back, or make friends in this town and see if she could make a life for herself. And with the help of her new roommate Miles, who had his own heartbreak to process, Daphne could do just that. Their friendship, in addition to the blossoming romance, was just one of my favorite parts of the book! I felt like it was an easy, natural friendship between them and the way it went from friends to lovers was natural, and not forced or all-at-once. While it wasn’t a slow burn, their first kiss (or first real kiss, I should say), was worth the wait.

Speaking of making new friends in a new town, Daphne also branched out and made new friends at her work. We meet Ashleigh, a single mother, who works with Daphne at the library. I liked this new friendship for Daphne outside of her sexual tension-filled friendship with Miles. I loved that Emily Henry wrote that—making friends as an adult, especially when you’re starting over, is hard. And for someone like Daphne, where it’s harder to speak up and make small talk, it was really refreshing to read. I liked that there were characters like Miles and Ashleigh that helped Daphne branch out and help her to be her own person (an “I” instead of a “we”).

Overall, I really loved it. I loved the friend-to-lovers trope (the most superior trope, in my opinion) and Daphne and Miles’s eventual relationship seemed so natural because of their friendship. I loved Daphne’s growth from being someone who relied on her partner (on being a “we”), to relying on herself. If you love rom-coms, Emily Henry, Taylor Swift, and overall, romance books, then you will love this book.

Rating: 4.5/5

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