“Funny Story” isn’t a funny story at all. But it is a good one.
Emily Henry's new romance novel starts with dueling breakups that have rocked the two main characters’ worlds — and forced them to bond over their shared broken hearts.
Daphne is a planner who is always on time. She’s a buttoned-up librarian who hosts a lively children’s reading hour and keeps her personal life closed off from her colleagues.
Miles is more subdued. He’s nice, thoughtful and able to win over anyone he’s talking to, especially the regulars he sees on his weekend trips to the farmers market. He doesn’t have much of a relationship with his parents, for myriad reasons, but he’s very close to his younger sister.
Daphne and Miles’ story starts as they navigate their newly single lives now that their exes are dating ... each other.
They go through the throes of grieving together, with a soundtrack of love songs accompanying each phase. It's practically begging for a movie version, to go along with the several other Henry books already in various stages of production.
Early on, they decide to pretend they’re dating to make their exes jealous. But as time goes on, they discover that they see each other as more than friends, that they really are falling for each other.
“Funny Story” is Henry’s latest romance — and her steamiest one so far. It’s a mixture of will-they-won’t-they in a way that makes you really want them to. They’re the protagonists in separate love stories who are brought together by heartbreak. Daphne and Miles are characters you can empathize with and root for.
And “Funny Story” is classic Henry. It’s a meet-cute in a non-patronizing way. It’s a modern love story, and one that you won’t be mad is slightly predictable — because it makes you feel good and makes you believe in a thing called love.
“So many of the most beautiful things in life are unexpected,” Henry writes.
It’s funny how life and love are both that way.
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AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews
Sophia Rosenbaum, The Associated Press
