Name: Funny Story
Series: Stand Alone
Author: Emily Henry
Publisher: Viking
Format: Audible Audio
Genres: Adult, Contemporary Romance
Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️🌶️
😭? – No tears were shed
Rating:
Synopsis: Goodreads
Daphne always loved the way her fiancé Peter told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it…right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.
Which is how Daphne begins her new story: Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.
Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads —Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. 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?
Review:
I am just as shocked as you likely are that I enjoyed this contemporary romance as much as I did! We immediately find out that Daphne’s fiance has left her, kicked her out and to top it off, is already dating his best friend – the one that he told Daphne was only a friend and he had no feelings towards her that were romantic… Not great!! And that best friend? Was also in a relationship and dumped him (Miles!) for Daphne’s ex-fiance. Crazy start.
Daphne and Miles on a drunken night discuss the possibility of convincing their ex’s that they’re dating so that they don’t think they’re upset over their relationship and pining after them. As the trope list suggests, they do end up in a situation where they’re fake dating and I love this trope – this may be the easiest way to get me to read a contemporary romance honestly.
I rated Funny Story 5 stars because Daphne and Miles felt relatable, had excellent banter and their chemistry had me believing their romance despite the fact that it begins as a fake dating situation. They really did have me laughing (I was lucky enough to be able to listen to this in one day while working and so I did have to pause on a number of occassions to control giggles and laughter because I didn’t want to disrupt anyone working). I liked both of our main characters separately and together, which I think is really important in any romance!
Emily Henry also wrote some cracking secondary characters that helped give the story a bit more depth than just this fake dating story line. I loved Ashley and Julia and if Emily Henry has written a story for Julia, or writes one in the future, I’ll sign up to read that because she was brilliant. I originally thought her inclusion was going to be a drama trigger, but she wasn’t and I loved her inclusion.
Funny Story blew me away and Emily’s writing style was fun to read and I very much enjoyed it. Upon finishing, I went and got another Em Hen book to read (Book Lovers, in case anyone is wondering) and I am very much looking forward to reading more of her work! I almost regret listening to Funny Story as I don’t have annotations to look back on, but given that I have a physical copy I wouldn’t have annotated anyway, so not a huge loss… The narrator, Julia Whelan, was excellent too so it was a really enjoyable listen.
“You can’t force a person to show up, but you can learn a lesson when they don’t”
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