One of my all-time favorite authors, Emily Henry scratched all the necessary feel-good, rom-com sweet spots with this one. Funny Story, Henry’s newest novel, has cracked the top two EH books for me.

Daphne is left living with Miles after being jilted by her ex-fiance, who left her for Miles’s girlfriend. While bonding over their shared betrayals, chronic nomad Daphne and sexy nice guy Miles decide to pull off a fake relationship to spite their exes and end up falling head-over-heels for real. Funny Story is a perfect combo of “roommates to lovers” and “fake relationship” tropes and has, in true Emily Henry style, the perfect amount of banter.

The pros: This book is just plain cute. It perfectly executes the roomates-to-lovers thing, but it remains relatively realistic thanks to the frequent banter between main characters and perfectly worded hatred for the exes. I’ve always found Emily Henry books easy to follow, since her characters are victims of such totally plausible human afflictions (people pleasing, bad relationships with parents, workaholism, fear of commitment), and these characters were no different. Daphne and Miles felt like two people who could absolutely exist, and the pacing of their relationship felt pretty on-par.

Henry’s methods also tend to follow a pretty predictable pattern, and I like that consistency. You can guarantee she won’t leave any loose ends untied, and she’ll include the flash-forward ending just for reader satisfaction. Seeing where each character ends up has always been gratifying to me as a reader who just invested my time into every side-character and plot line, especially when the side characters are so easy to love.

The cons: I never have much to say as to the downside of Emily Henry books, but I do usually have the same one eye-roll moment. The main characters in Henry’s stories almost always self-sabotoge their relationships because of the trauma they’ve experienced at the hands of their own parents. Once I get past the main characters having a cheesy revelation about their own inner workings, the problem resolution is pretty satisfying. In this one, specifically, I felt that Daphne’s parents weren’t both necessary to the plot. I would’ve taken either her mom or dad and their accompanying personalities, but Daphne’s confrontation with her dad seemed like the more important moment for her development, making her mom more of a placeholder best friend.

My only other complaint was that this book mirrored Beach Read so closely that I was giving a knowing side glance up to the cameras every few chapters. Heroine with dad issues, the local boy who offers to show her around town, the rag-tag book club (or poker club) who welcome the new girl into their arms, and the male lead with ex-girlfriend issues to set the scene for a worrisome “did he go back to her” moment. Both books are great, and unsurprisingly, Beach Read is my other top-two EH books, but it would be silly not to acknowledge the pattern.

Final thoughts on this book were the same as all of the other EH books I’ve read. I found it cute without being cheesy, I loved the banter between characters, and I think the side characters were developed perfectly for their role in the story. I read this one alongside my book club, and I’m curious to see how the other women felt about it, but overall, Funny Story was fairly predictable and made me giggle and root for the characters the whole way through.

My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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