Funny Story, Emily Henry, 2024
Emily Henry’s Funny Story, like her other novels, is rich with what matters in a sweet, take me out of here and let me dream, romantic comedy—banter, humor, idyllic love and a cheesy, completely unrealistic but mostly believable hallmark plot. What better way for a mooning girl to end her summer?
Synopsis:
After her fiancé (Peter) leaves her for his long-time best friend just weeks before their wedding, Daphne learns the meaning of desperate times call for desperate measures. With nowhere to go, she temporarily moves into the apartment of—bear with me—her ex fiancé’s new fiancé’s (Petra’s) new ex (Miles), down a partner same as she is.
Peter, country club goer who tracks his protein, and Miles, bartender who leaves weed on the coffee table, are complete foils of each other. How Daphne can love one as well as the other is beyond me, but here they are in kinship, bonding through drunken wine nights, cursing their ex-lovers, and lying through their teeth about falling for each other for the sake of making their exes believe they’ve moved on.
Commendation:
One thing I always commend Emily Henry for is the fullness of her subplots and the fullness of her characters. While the whole “fall for the unsuspecting roommate you’re fake dating to make your exes jealous” may be predictable, the nuances within Daphne’s relationship with her father and Miles’s relationship with himself are a little less so. Or maybe still predictable, but definitely complex and specific enough that readers feel understood in more niche areas than just falling in love (been there, done that, boring 😪).
Daphne’s father is a borderline deadbeat, around just enough to make it so she wishes he’d stay longer. His inconsistency as a father offers explanation for Daphne’s fear of becoming close with people. I like the way Henry does this: Daphne’s father is a non-character for a little more than half the novel, and then makes an appearance for just as many chapters necessary to convince Daphne and reader that he’s going to become present. Then he suddenly takes off, leaving her (and me??) wondering why life makes it so hope is always turned into a negative.
Miles also has very strained relationships with his parents. He’s taken up responsibility for his 21 year old sister (he and Daphne are early 30s, btw), which explains why he always acts cool and collected despite having big emotions inside. His sister’s character, Julia, doesn’t add much to the novel, but she does allow for the reader to understand that Miles is a selfless, deep caretaker.
Complaint:
But then, I’ll say, it becomes a little mawkish (this is why it’s commercial) (also spoiler), when Miles drives hours to catch Daphne’s father after he’s driven off. Like, dude, yeah, be a selfless caregiver but where is the line?! And why wouldn’t you just call? To add to the unbelievability of this, he doesn’t tell Daphne. She’s working under the impression that he’s sleeping with Petra, and they argue about it without him ever explaining that he stayed overnight not because he was sleeping with Petra, but because he was in a different state confronting Daphne’s father.
Daphne, too, later speaks her mind to her dad. I understand this is meant to be part of a pivotal climax, and maybe for some it does leave a reader with a satisfying “yes queen” moment, but for me it rebuts my assumption that there’s high-stake, impenetrable emotions involved. Here I am, a reader with not nearly as strained a relationship with my own father, yet I know I’d never be able to hit him with a quick “by the way, you were a horrible dad!” on the way to an event and then somehow manage to get through it without having a catastrophic breakdown in the bathroom.
The “event,” by the way, is a 24-hour readathon held at Daphne’s library, where she’s the librarian. Small note, but this I love. All descriptions of her career left me with a low hum within my bones urging that I go back to school for Library.
Complaint:
The only other piece of the novel which really hurt my very important and critical ability to imagine I am living Daphne’s life was how easily both Daphne and Miles move on from their exes. Their years-long relationships end after a completely unexpected cheating scandal, within weeks their exes are getting married to the people they cheated with, and I’m sorry, you mean to tell me no one is visiting a psych ward about it?? In fact, by the end of the novel (spans just 3 months or so), Daphne and Miles are so in love that they both HAPPILY reject their exes when asked to take them back. Is that complete MONKEY TALK or am I a fixed fire sign INFP with ten years worth of relationship trauma?
Rating:
4/5 because I’m supposing my disbelief in a love like Miles and Daphne’s is simply cause I haven’t seen it to believe it with my very own eyes, and really for a commercial fiction novel, I think Emily Henry’s got some banger thoughts and lines. Queen of summer rom-coms AND queen of restoring love in my cold and cynical heart. Here are some quotes to tell you why!!
Quotes:
For reasons I don’t completely understand, I feel like I could cry.
And I’m not wondering what Peter thinks of all this when Miles parts my lips with his tongue, his hand sliding firmly down to the curve of my ass. And when Miles’s other hand winds itself into my hair, and my spine arches up into him of its own accord, I’m thinking only of the spicy scent of ginger, the taste of espresso macaron in his mouth, the feeling of his erection between us.
I dream about fireworks, about cool hands, the rasp of a jaw, the taste of ginger and smell of woodsmoke.
“You were gone,” he murmurs. “Now I’m back,” I whisper.
Miles shifts in the grass beside me, his knee brushing mine like a question. Are you there? Are you okay?
I’m backsliding toward the pit I’ve found myself in a hundred times before, waiting on someone I know in my gut isn’t coming.
I’ve never talked to him like this. It’s close to things I’ve screamed, in my darkest late-night fantasy speeches.
I want to push as hard as possible against all the bruises in my heart, until it changes me.
He’d be doing me a favor, putting me out of my misery, dropping a period at the end of this sentence. “Please,” I plead.
I didn’t know it was there, that ember of hope.
The late nights binge-watching The X-Files on the couch they picked out together, the early mornings making toast while they’re still too tired to speak, the kids who will earn their first scars in the backyard and badly practice instruments at inconvenient times, and the way their favorite candle’s scent will gradually infuse the walls so that every time they come back from a trip, exhausted, and dump their bags inside the door, they’ll smell that they’re where they belong.
