Book Review: Happy Place by Emily Henry

July 24, 2026

Okay, I was wrong… This is my new favorite Emily Henry book! I loved absolutely everything about this book. I feel like it really hit home with a lot of the themes and I liked that it wasn’t a typical romance novel plot.

We follow the story of Harriet, who is in her residency in San Francisco, but often dreams of her happy place at her best friend‘s cabin in Maine. Here, she can just be she doesn’t have to live up to anybody’s expectations of her or feel the weight of letting people down. She gets to be herself with the people that know her the best and love her. The best Sabrina and Cleo were her college roommates. Then they added Wyn (who later became Harriet’s finance) and Parth (who later became Sabrina’s boyfriend), and last to join the group was Cleo‘s girlfriend Kimmy who felt like the missing piece they always needed. Our story starts 10 years after college and at the beginning of the annual reunion at the Maine cabin. But this year everything is wrong. Harriet and Wyn broke up. The relationship between her and her friends is strained. Harriet is exhausted from a residence she is struggling to keep up with. But all will be okay once she gets there. Right? Wrong. But it might be better than she imagined.

I loved this book. It tugged my heartstrings and made me feel seen. Emily Henry is brilliant. I dragged my feet reading her books and now I’m on the bandwagon, crying, laughing, and obsessing over her books. She just has such a way of making characters real and messy but the story still feels cozy and digestible. The romance feels real and the friendships possible. But this book in particular pulled at my heartstrings. It had friendship and found family. It had love and shared history. It had family systems that are imperfect and less than ideal. It had warm parents and mending relationships with siblings. I just adore it. I cannot recommend this book more and Emily Henry in addition.