Book title:
Funny Story
Author:
Emily Henry
When Daphne’s fiancé Peter decides to break up with her after his bachelor party, Daphne’s life is in ruins. In the fallout, Daphne moves in with the charming and tattooed Miles, who just so happens to be Peter’s new fiancée Petra’s ex-fiancé. One drunken night, they hatch a plan to make their exes jealous, but the fake-romance plot is short-lived as real feelings quickly grow.
Funny Story, Emily Henry’s fifth novel, is a joyful and cathartic romcom that is truly the funniest of stories. Carried by genuine, witty dialogue and wonderful pacing, Henry crafts deeply relatable and unexpectedly complex characters: Daphne and Miles are not perfect and sometimes mess up, but at the end of the day, they each want to better themselves. The side characters, too, are written with depth and given diverting and hopeful character arcs.
In writing such sympathetic characters, Henry also captures with precision the complexity of human interaction, from the emotional duress of miscommunications and mishaps to the heartbreak of friend breakups and the heady, steamy, unadulterated joy of falling in love. And from the old comes the new: when Daphne’s world falls apart, alongside finding new love, she builds a new life from the ashes of the old. Daphne’s journey is a story of embracing romance along with its power to change us, and the constellation of relationships we build along the way.
