Happy Place: Book Review

“Happy Place” by Emily Henry has once again delivered a romance book with her incredible depth of characters and storytelling. Just like People We Meet on Vacation, she delivers an amazing romance that is well-written.

I am waiting for that shoe to drop that one day, Emily Henry will write a book where no one will be together due to the circumstances. Don’t let your guard down everyone. This author will rip your heart out and leave you to sob in your feelings. I got my eyes on your Emily Henry.

I have recently read Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson, and oh my gosh. Does this book go hand in hand? But what got me was the ending, the too-happy ending. Just the like the romance, it is too good to be true. If you read this book about immature emotional parents, you know what I mean.

Regardless of how I feel about the ending of the book. I felt that this was so enjoyable. This book explores mental health, honoring traditions of friendships, grief, being true to yourself and what makes you happy. Tons of emotional depth explored in this book.

Every year, Harriet and her extremely close group of friends get together every year to vacation at a cottage in Maine ever since they met in college. It was a time honored that tradition. Until one traditional vacation comes around and they are informed of the cottage being sold that year. That year would be the last for them to be together. It would have been fine if Harriet didn’t had to pretend to be still engaged with the man who broke her heart 6 months earlier.  

I liked the fake relationship trope of this. The fact Harriet and Wyn pretended to still be together to preserve the nostalgia was enduring but cringey at the same time. One close friend in particular was having a hard time letting go so they kept it a secret to not ruin the vacation.

What really stuck out to me was Harriet just understanding what she wants and not who other people sacrificed for her to be. That doing what other people wanted was causing her to be truely unhappy. You see her go through those emotions and she worked through them to finally find her Happy Place.

Like I said in the beginning, it was too…happy at the end. It kind of made me want to throw the book. Because of my personally experience, what if you don’t get the perfect ending like that? Where your parents just accept your choices without judgement? What happened to the years of parents pushing you to be what they want you to be? They just accept you and said that they just wanted to make you happy. It felt all to easy at the end and I personally felt like I wanted to quit reading romances all together. 

What really made this book for me is the solid friendships and the romance between Harriet and Wyn.