Funny Story

Funny Story by Emily Henry is a standalone contemporary romance published in April 2024, and quickly became one of her most talked-about releases since Beach Read first put her on the map. Set in the small lakeside town of Waning Bay, Michigan, it's a book that takes a premise built for maximum chaos and turns it into something far gentler and more emotionally grounded than the setup suggests.

Daphne moved to Waning Bay to be with her fiancé, Peter, and build the life she'd always pictured - right up until he tells her, days before their wedding, that he's actually in love with his childhood best friend, Petra. Suddenly homeless in a town where she knows almost no one, Daphne ends up moving in with the only other person who understands exactly how she feels: Miles, Petra's own ex. Two heartbreaks, one shared apartment, and a slowly dawning plan to fake date each other purely to make their exes a little jealous. It should be simple. It is not simple.

What makes this such a satisfying entry in Henry's catalogue is how unhurried it's willing to be. The Fake Dating premise is really just the excuse that gets Daphne and Miles into each other's orbit - the actual story is about two very different people, thrown into Forced Proximity, slowly figuring out who they are once the relationships that defined them are gone. Daphne is reserved, list-driven, and a children's librarian who's spent the past year folding herself into someone else's life; Miles is easygoing, warm, and has never met a stranger he couldn't charm - an Opposites Attract pairing that some readers have read as a Grumpy-Sunshine Dynamic, depending on which of them you think is doing the grumping.

This is very much a Slow-burn Romance in the truest sense: real feelings arrive quietly, through shared evenings, Witty Banter & Sharp Dialogue, and the kind of small domestic intimacy that builds without either character quite noticing. Henry also doesn't shy away from heavier ground beneath the rom-com surface - both Daphne and Miles are working through real Trauma and Healing, including Daphne's complicated relationship with an absent father, and the book takes that seriously rather than treating it as backdrop. Watching Daphne's quiet Found Confidence unfold - learning to take up space, ask for what she wants, and stop disappearing into other people's stories - is arguably the more compelling arc than the romance itself, even as the two threads inevitably tangle together.

The Small Town Romance setting does real work here too: Waning Bay is warm, specific, and lived-in, the kind of place where a summer can genuinely change someone. Readers who've enjoyed Henry's open-door Heat / Spice in previous books will find the connection here leans more toward earned emotional intimacy than frequency, in keeping with the book's overall unhurried pace.

For longtime Emily Henry readers, Funny Story is frequently named among her best - a book that takes a gimmicky premise and gives it real heart, real humour, and a hopeful ending that feels thoroughly earned.