So now we fall into the tropes that are so overdone they have their own taglines: fake dating, forced proximity, friends to lovers, second chances, found family, blah, blah, blah. We have Wyn and Harriet who were engaged and are now broken up but don’t want to tell their friends and ruin the week they’re spending together. It wasn’t funny or charming, and it certainly wasn’t enjoyable to read.īut wait, there’s more. Segue into childish bickering, no concept about the difference between sex and love, terrible communication, and…need I go on? This is immature teenage idiocy, not the behavior of supposedly intelligent adults. There is drunkenness and amnesia-inducing hangovers, pot gummies, a random bra that goes flying, and other nonsense. These are six friends who are educated professionals (a doctor, two lawyers, two urban farmers, and a talented furniture maker) that aren’t very interesting except for the collective gift of acting unbelievably stupid. Which brings me to the next set of problems.

That is a little what it was like to spend time with Wyn, Harriet, and their four friends. Have you ever been to a party where you don’t know anybody? Where all the people have memories and history with everyone else but not with you? Where, when you try to enter a conversation, all they do is talk around you and keep saying things like “hey, remember that time we (not you)…?” You’re constantly left out and reminded that you don’t belong. Now the disappointment I’m feeling is palpable. The release date has been on my calendar for ages. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses).What a frustrating book. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.

Which is how they find themselves sharing a bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. And still haven’t told their best friends. Except, now-for reasons they’re still not discussing-they don’t. Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college-they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls.

Happy place by emily henry release date