Title: Funny Story
Author: Emily Henry
Series: N/A
Dates Read: 24 – 25/08/2024
Published Date: 23 April 2024
Genre: Romance
Pages: 387
Pace: Medium
Content Warnings (May contain spoilers)
Who is this for? Young Adult, Adult
This book covers:
- Losing the perfect life – engaged, beautiful house, dream job.
- Your fiancee cheating on you with their childhood best friend, and kicking you out of your shared house
- Forming new friendships with unexpected people, and learning to trust
- A blossoming relationship with the most unexpected of people – your new roommate, and the ex-boyfriend of your ex-fiancees new girlfriend
- Childhood trauma and learning to accept and confront it
Format/Disclosure: Library, paperback
Rating: 4.75⭐
Review:
Daphne lives a perfect life – her dream job, a beautiful house, and the man of her dreams. Until the man of her dreams returns from his bachelor weekend to tell Daphne that he’s actually in love with his childhood best friend. Daphne’s life is promptly turned on its head, and she finds herself living with the ex-boyfriend of her ex-fiance’s new girlfriend. We follow the journey of Daphne finding herself, finding friends who love and support her, and finding someone who loves every part of her, exactly as it is.
I’m sure it was a very well thought-out reason for the author to name 2 characters so similarly, but it definitely caused me a lot of confusion more than once, where I had to go back and re-read a sentence because I’d just input the wrong name. Peter and Petra? Just too close.
Daphne is great – I really liked her. She seemed real and vulnerable and raw. She seemed relatable. Her life wasn’t solely roses and rainbows, but it also didn’t focus too heavily on her struggles. We saw how friendships and support can drastically change a really shitty situation. Miles was also a beautiful inclusion, although he felt like he could’ve been fleshed out slightly more – it seems his main mentions were smirks/half smiles and flashing eyes, which started to put a very funny mental image in my head once I noticed how often it seemed to be mentioned.
I’m an avid book-lover, and frequent library-goer, so reading about a librarian was a fun change. I enjoyed that although her friends seemed to tease her for being modest/dowdy, there was never any punching down or trying to make books/reading seem nerdy or lame (I’m just having flashbacks to my childhood and how often I was teased for enjoying reading). It’s just refreshing to see nothing but support in a modern novel.
The friendship between Daphne and Ashleigh was also just so pure and lovely. We see a hiccup which could easily lead to the complete breakdown of their relationship, but instead the author focuses on communication. I have a massive pet peeve towards miscommunication being used as a plot device – advancing the plot in a stupid way just because the characters won’t talk to each other, but instead we see the complete opposite. Ashleigh shares her feelings and insecurities, and it makes their friendship stronger. I’ve heard Emily Henry has a strong theme on friendships, and I hope so, because this one was beautiful to read about.
At times, it did feel like this book ran on a bit longer than it needed to. I understand that it was worldbuilding/building the foundation for a healthy relationship between Daphne and Miles, but there was a point where I was ~60% of the way through the book and just assumed there would be some fight/miscommunication (As is typical in so many books) just to explain the length. Although there was a slight hiccup, it wasn’t to the degree I expected, and didn’t really derail the story too much. But, it still felt like there could’ve been some story shaved off.
I really enjoyed the scene between Daphne and Peter towards the end of the book – seeing how far she’s come and how much more she valued herself. It’s such a subtle way of showing readers how much you should believe in yourself without necessarily shoving it in their faces. I was so proud of Daphne and excited to see where she went next, whether that was with Miles or not (Although obviously we all knew she’d end up with him.)