Reviews with content warning for Infidelity - Happy Place - Urlaub mit dem Ex

So cute and captivating. I love these characters. I love how the side characters weren’t even side characters, but they had lives and personalities of their own. A story about (mis)communication, growing up, and always finding a place where you belong with the people you love.

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kkpines's review against another edition

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emotional funny lighthearted relaxing sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

For a book called 'Happy Place,' I spent most of it in shambles.

As a people-pleasing daughter, this felt almost too real.

There is so much grief in this book: from holding onto post-graduate friendships for dear life to realizing you can outgrow yourself. It left me feeling homesick for a place I’ve never been to, and a person I’ve never known.

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hmwoodward's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Emily Henry delivers with her usual humor, chemistry, and banter with this one. I always feel like I'm there beside the characters in her books from the way she describes everything. I'm seriously craving the smell and feel of sunscreen and ocean water and the smell and taste of buttery lobster thanks to this read!

While not dissimilar to her other books, this one is a second chance romance and has a different feel and tension to it because of that dynamic. Harriet and Wyn are stuck together because of the group vacation and because the years of their relationship have led to a friend group that's venn diagram is just a circle. They are navigating the ramifications of their breakup for themselves and how it complicates things for everyone around them. All this while an old group of friends tries to live out their glory days for the last trip to their go-to spot ever and are all dealing with their own separate issues.

This book realistically address the challenges of a relationship where you grow up together and friendships where you grow up together. If you aren't careful, you can grow apart entirely.

I also really felt for the main character in her struggles with her career and her future - I have certainly been there before myself. It was just another relatable and realistic aspect in this one.

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jenna_dash's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Difficult to get into. Limited insight into the cause of the conflict until the resolution, creating limited sympathy for any characters.

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emmacartlidge's review against another edition

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emotional lighthearted slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

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immovabletype's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I laughed, I cried, I swooned; I did all three at the same time and ended up choking on my own spit. Emily Henry is my happy place.

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bookishmillennial's review against another edition

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emotional funny reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

disclaimer: I don’t really give starred reviews. I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not. Find me here: https://linktr.ee/bookishmillennial

This was Emily Henry's worst book. I'm being a brat but it was indeed NOT a happy place. It was a horrible place. These people are horrible friends to each other. The resolution is one of the most privileged white woman shit I've read, and I don't like anyone in this book, so I was not rooting for them. I couldn't stand this book, cry about it!

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bringmybooks's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful lighthearted relaxing sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

you’re either gonna love it or hate it and idk what to tell you

B̷R̷I̷N̷G̷ ✨ 𝗕𝗢𝗥𝗥𝗢𝗪 ✨ B̷Y̷P̷A̷S̷S̷

I honestly & truly don’t think this book is going to be for everyone, and I honestly & truly don’t think all of Emily Henry is for everyone (4 starred her first two, lukewarm on them in retrospect, DNFed Book Lovers, don’t @ me). All of that being said, I honestly & truly loved this book.

(Also, did I finally break down and decide to read this because the MC loves Murder She Wrote? no comment)

There are some books that I think have universal appeal, and others that hit harder because of the life you’ve lived and the experiences you’ve had, and I think that was a huge part of why this hit so well for me. I can totally understand why people would look at this and go “miscommunication trope at it’s finest, yawn” but (as someone who’s not typically a fan of this trope) I felt this was a super realistic portrayal of trying to figure out who you are and what you want as you grow older, especially as you try to do it in a relationship with someone you love who is growing up alongside you.

One of my gripes with some of EH’s work is that it’s too … quippy. Nobody can be “on” 24/7, zinging barbs back and forth with whomever they come across from the moment they open their eyes until the moment they go to bed. Sometimes even the quippiest person just calls their partner and says, “Hey, do we need milk?” without there being a joke attached to it, you know?

That being said, I felt that that the characters in this book were way more realistic, and I actually believed in them, which made it a lot easier to stay invested in the story & in their relationships. It’s got so much heart in the way that growing up in a friend group is described, especially as we start to want different things that don’t align with how our friends or partners are growing up.

tl;dr this one brought me back to EH and I’ll be giving her next one a read!

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