Funny Story by Emily Henry: Is this 2024’s Best Romance?

Emily Henry is the go-to romance author of the decade. The question is whether her 2024 adult romance release, Funny Story, will capture the crown as the year’s best romance book. Read on for my review of Funny Story where I share whether it is a romance worth reading.

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How does Emily Henry do it time and time again? I love that she gives us unique characters with imperfect lives to fall for and root for their happily ever after!

Funny Story Summary:

When Daphne’s fiance realizes he’s actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra, she’s left stranded and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex…right?

Funny Story: My Review

Emily Henry books (along with Colleen Hoover’s books) have that ability to attract all types of readers not just the romance book lover who’s looking for a happy ending. I think that’s because the romance in her books is subtly woven into her stories where the characters’ struggles are more front and center.

The premise of Funny Story is so captivating and what drew me to this title and naming it one of my most anticipated romance books of 2024. I’ve heard so many stories from people I’ve met about how they’ve met their friend or their significant other. This idea of an origin story is universal to all, and I loved how Henry used that fact as the jumping-off point for Funny Story.

The fact that two exes, whose exes dumped them to be together, end up falling for each other in this story was too hard to pass up and had me loving this story before I even cracked a page.

I also think that the heartbreak of break-ups is something universally understood by all and that many readers can relate to the heartbreak of our two main characters.

Both Daphne and Miles had their exes break things off in horrendous ways which felt like a punch to the gut. I think because both of these characters recognize the hurt in each other enabled them to be themselves right from the beginning with each other in their own relationship, which begin as roommates who rarely spoke to one another to friends on a mission to portray a fake relationship to two people falling for each other when that relationship became more real.

Seeing their depression and the difficulty they both had in moving on made me believe that they could fall for someone else. If this was an instalove romance I wouldn’t have bought it, but instead, it was a sweet, slow burn romance that showed their human, hurt side without brushing those feeling aside or under the rug.

I love that about Emily Henry’s books and characters who aren’t overly perfect but perfect in their imperfection.

“I just,” I say, “feel really stupid….” “You’re not stupid….” “He told you to trust him, and that’s what you did,” he insists. “That’s what you’re supposed to be able to do with people you love. They just don’t always live up to it.”

I also have a love of books where a character is a librarian and Daphne was the best. I would have loved to have attended her Read-a-thon as a kid 😊.

The only thing that I would change or why this was not a five-star read for me is that it felt like their background stories could’ve just been a bit tighter. I understood how Daphne and Miles’ pasts shaped their previous relationships and selection of partners but I wanted to understand Miles a bit more and Daphne’s dad and stepmother felt thrown in at times.

“A part of me is just waiting,” I rasp, “for the moment when you see whatever it is that drives people away. And I don’t want that. I don’t want you to stop wanting me around. I thin kit might break my heart to be someone you don’t like.”

I would have loved to have seen them post more online of their “fake relationship” to build up more tension between them but that angle of the story just seemed to form as an idea and quickly fade away. 

How she wrapped up the ending though to come full circle was brilliant.

Overall, I definitely recommend this book because it has great writing, a unique storyline, flawed but lovable characters, and a beautiful happy ending. I’ll always pick up Emily Henry’s latest for that very reason.

Will this one nab her the title of Best Romance in the 2024 Goodreads Choice Awards? We will have to see!

More Emily Henry Books:

• Happy Place by Emily Henry
• Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

Related Book Lists:

• Best Fake Relationship Romance Books
• Best Fake Dating Romance Books
• Romance Heroes With Wounded Hearts
• 10 Books Like Funny Story to Read Next
• 2024 Goodreads Choice Awards Nominees for Best Romance

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