Yet another wonderful book from Emily Henry. I've read all of her books and this might be my favorite one yet. Harriet and Wyn are a couple that you can't help but root for and the friends they have are well-developed and a joy to read about.

I really liked one. Would be easy to recommend if you liked her other ones or second chance romance books.

LOVED! Alternating between past and present you follow the lives of a group of friends, mainly focusing on Harriet and Wyn. It all starts in college and then transitions into navigating life as working adults. A beautiful read about friendships, reminiscing on the past, family dynamics, and love interests. As a reader, you’ll see these characters through their successes and struggles as they grow up and become the people they want to be. Lastly, Emily Henry does a wonderful job tying in humor into this read.

I was very excited to get this ARC as I absolutely loved Book Lovers and recommended it to everyone I know. Unfortunately this was more like People We Meet on Vacation. The friendships and characters were all very flushed out but the actual issues keeping the romantic interests apart were extremely predictable and not real obstacles at all.

(No spoilers!)

Emily Henry just keeps writing fantastic novels. I was immediately invested in the friend group, and wanted them to all live happily ever after.

Harriet, Sabrina, and Cleo have been best friends since college. Along the way they met Parth, and his roommate Wyn, and then later Kimmy. For a decade they’ve been friends, and more — Sabrina and Parth, Cleo and Kimmy, Harriet and Wyn.

But Harriet and Wyn split up 5 months earlier. He moved home to Montana, while Harriet continues her surgery residency in San Francisco. Their friends don’t know though, and Harriet and Wyn find themselves forced to pretend they’re still together when they all meet up in Maine for a summer vacation like they all used to do in years gone by.

Charming and poignant, Happy Place is an irresistible read! Thanks to Berkley/Netgalley for the advance copy.

I love Emily Henry, and this is her at her best. A lotttt happens at the end, which felt a little less graceful than the rest of the novel, but that's the only reason this hasn't taken the top spot in my personal favs of Emily Henry's books.

Emily Henry always delivers a fun escape, which is something I appreciate more than ever lately. Her characters are always interesting and make you want to see them in a happy ending. Book Lovers is a hard act to follow, but this was a lot of fun as well!

Another great novel by Emily Henry. I really enjoyed the storyline and different relationships featured. Even though the outcome was predictable I still devoured the story and appreciated it so much.

This book utterly broke me. Where Book Lovers felt right for me because of the anti-hero and the cost of her ambitions, Happy Place feels right for me because of the crushing weight that we place on ourselves to ensure other’s joy.

As soon as I heard Emily Henry was writing a second-chance romance I planned to take a day off of work to read it. HAPPY PLACE is her best work yet, truly a remarkable work of literature. This book touched my literal SOUL. The most perfect story of love and friendship, Harriet and Wyn are my forever family

Thank you NetGalley and Berkley publishers for the ARC of one of the most highly anticipated books of 2023.

OMGGGG this book was everything I could want and more. This is my new favourite Emily Henry book and I cannot wait for the publication date.

Harriet is going to meet up with her best friends at the cottage that holds some of her happiest memories. But when she get there she is surprised to see that her ex fiancé Wyn is there even though he said he wouldn’t be attending.

I found myself relating the the story line of how hard it is to reach out to your friends in your twenties as well as how family dynamics effect our relationships. If that still doesn’t have you sold there’s also some enemies to lovers, fake dating, and LOTS of forced proximity (one bed ;))!!

4.75

she did that!!!!! emily henry’s books work so well because of the emotions that run alongside the romance, and the friendships/found family in this book are beautiful. i loved every character, especially cleo and kimmy, and i liked the alternating timeline chapters. there are so many great quotes i want to put here but this was my favorite (paraphrased):

“You said [your brain] felt like a Ferris wheel. Like all your thoughts were constantly circling, and you’d reach out for one, but it was hard to stay on it for too long because they kept spinning.”
“Except with you. You’re like gravity … Everything keeps spinning, but my mind’s always got one hand on you.”

I can’t quantify the magic of Emily Henry I have tried, but that’s all I can describe it as magic. These intense feelings of joy and loss and vivid imagery and you can feel the love. it just comes off the page. I was so in love with Beach Read so in love. I remember making video chat messages to my girlfriends about it while unloading my dishwasher when we were locked down in the spring of 2020 after I read my advance readers copy. I waxed poetic about how it made me love my husband more and brought me so much joy. This is not that. Happy place is not that. I cried, almost the entire novel. The writing in the “dark place” is staccato. That is what dark places feel like and are remembered like sharp and pointy and intense. Read this book if you’re ready to examine the relationship of your parents and how it affected every relationship you’ve ever been in. Read if you’re ready to examine your relationship with your parents and how it has made and shaped you and how you view yourself. This book is not for the faint of heart but it’s worth it.

Wow.

Emily Henry’s books have made me cry before. I have found characters within her pages that I relate to on an eerily personal level. However, none as much as one Harriet Kilpatrick.

The thing about Emily’s books is that the love stories always feel deeply real. The characters are relatable. They’re awkward, charming, sarcastic, hilarious, stubborn, foolish, genuine. Wyn and Harriet were like these two people who truly found each other and melded into each other alongside their found family - an incredible (INCREDIBLE) ensemble cast of characters. I loved this group of friends. Absolutely wept over my baby girl, Cleo, and cried for Sabrina.

I didn’t know about Wyn at first - especially because Gus is like my favorite grumpy son and how could anyone ever compete or compare? But in the end, I found myself wanting to hold him. To wrap him in a blanket and keep him safe.

This book was so funny and so warm and cozy and familiar, and yet it was heartbreaking and bittersweet at the same time.

I loved it. I still have tears stinging the back of my eyes as I write this review.

THANK YOU to Netgalley and Emily Henry and Berkely/Penguin Random House for this Advanced Reader’s Copy. I am in shambles.

Emily Henry has the ability to put the entirety of the human condition in book form. While this wasn't my absolute favorite Henry book, it still was utterly delicious.
Happy Place has every emotion, piled together. Every turn of the page left me anticipating the next. The basis of this story, the start of a friendship, is something that almost anyone who went to college envies. It's rare to find friends, let alone best, in a college admissions process. But Henry weaves this tale together from the bottom up, with this friendship. The ebbs and flows, the growths and setbacks, and the fear of change.
All in all, this book did not disappoint. I will always be delighted to see where Henry takes us readers, and this book was a perfect addition to her collection.

Emily Henry is a master! This book is a really lovely book, that has a romance and is a main focal point. But I thought that the friendship between Sabrina, Harriet & Cleo was really wonderful.
Harriet and Wyn were a struggle. You can see how much they love each other and you slowly get it revealed why they broke up.
I liked the dual timelines, it gave a great look into the past.
Another great novel by Henry!
Thanks NetGalley & the publisher for this ARC!

I love Emily Henry's previous books like Book Lovers and The People We Meet on Vacation. Her books are fun and light and easy to read. I have given all her books 4 stars and Happy Place will be no different. I enjoyed meeting the characters in this friend group and loved the way she separated out the chapters. I would have loved a different ending more than the one she went with, but was thoroughly entertained all the way through. Will easily recommend this book to patrons once it is released in April. Thank you NetGalley and Berkley for an ARC of this title.

I don't have enough wonderful things to say about Emily Henry. She is such an incredible author, and I'm so grateful I got to read this book in advance!

The main draw of this book for me (besides the author, of course) was the description. One of my favorite books of the past few years is You Deserve Each Other by Sarah Hogle, and the premise of this book sounded very similar. While I adore the two books individually, they differ in that You Deserve Each Other has more of a rom-com feel while Happy Place has more of a romantic drama vibe.

The characters are so well-written and the depictions of mental illness in all its forms (workplace anxiety, relationship anxiety, grief, depression, etc.) are expertly crafted and delicately handled. I loved getting to know them through the "before" of their relationship and the "during" of their break-up. There are so many emotions involved, and there wasn't just one thing that went wrong in the relationship... sometimes it bugs me in books where a single miscommunication results in the breakdown of a years-long relationship. In this case, both characters needed to do some reflecting and growing before they could find each other again.

I laughed. I cried. I read it in one sitting.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinions.

This book was so cute!! I love love love the way Emily Henry writes characters and how relatable they are in so many ways. I loved the friendship between the characters in this book, but especially how certain issues were dealt with. I think that's what makes her books so good to me, her characters feel real in a way that I've never noticed in other books.

I love Emily Henry's characters, and Happy Place is no exception! This latest installment of the Henryverse follows Harriet and her former fiancé Wyn as they navigate a messy, unplanned reunion with their already-tense friend group. Harriet is a driven doctor sludging through a surgeon residency, and Wyn is a loyal son carrying on his family's furniture repairing while struggling with his self-worth. Their whirlwind romance begins at a small liberal arts school, but their engagement recently came to an abrupt, confusing end. When they're both summoned to Maine for their friends' annual summer vacation, they scheme to hide the breakup from the group.

I'm not a huge fan of the exes/second chances trope, but this was a good version of it! There was a bit too much miscommunication for me, but I felt the issues dividing the couple were realistic.

4/5: Another great story from the reigning queen of well-rounded, funny, and witty romances.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!