Funny Story by Emily Henry

Pages: 384
Method: Hardcover
Rating: 5/5

Up to this point I have tried to keep my book reviews fairly short and to avoid any major spoilers, but I loved this book so much that I decided to make this review longer and a bit more in depth. If you can believe it, I even made a bubble chart with categories, notes, and page numbers so that I could keep all of my thoughts straight and make sure I didn’t forget anything that stood out to me.

Historically, I have loved Emily Henry’s books (I’m not as die hard a fan as so many BookTok girlies), but I read Happy Place a couple of months ago and it wasn’t my favorite. It’s probably a hot take and I still gave it a 3.9/5 but it felt like she changed up her writing style, and for me, it made a difference. This book, however, felt like a return to the quintessential Emily Henry writing and actually gave me a better idea of what I love so much about her stories.

One of the defining characteristics of Henry’s writing is her attention to detail. Not only are the details about the characters and their stories intricate (which I will discuss later) but the literary devices she uses, while they may go unnoticed, make a world of difference. The first example of this is her chapter titles. She doesn’t give every chapter a title but when she does use them, they indicate dates and the FMC’s countdown of her escape from the town she feels stuck in. But where this literary device is so well executed is when she starts changing the chapter titles after using “XX Days Until I Can Leave” for the first 220 pages. With a detail as small as the chapter titles, Henry gives us an inside look into the character’s thought process and that her feelings about her current situation may be changing. As the reader it was almost a confirmation of my own opinion of what I wanted her to do.

Another detail that I loved about this book was the subtle changes she made to the fake dating trope. I often find that this trope annoys me because of how much miscommunication it naturally comes with. When the characters have to lie to everyone around them constantly, it inevitably causes them to lie to themselves when they start developing feelings. But in this story, the only people they lie to are their exes. Immediately after she tells the lie to her ex, she goes to the MMC (who is also her roommate at the time), tells him, they discuss it, and decide they won’t do anything drastic but maybe post a photo or two on social media to make their exes jealous. Then, a bit later, the MMC’s sister comes into town, they tell her too, and she thinks it’s hilarious. The FMC even tells her friend and the implication of them telling the people closest to them is that there is less pressure to act differently than they naturally would. So, they become friends and build a relationship as themselves, which ends up helping them be more honest about their frustration with their friendship status and admitting that they are attracted to each other.

The last literary device that I wanted to draw attention to was Henry’s use of flashbacks. Sometimes flashbacks can be long and give us a lot of unnecessary detail but their usage in this book was tasteful. They gave just enough detail to understand the character more but not so much that you feel like you’re being pulled from the current timeline. A more recent flashback of the FMC’s fiance leaving her is used at the very beginning to set up the entire story and then minor, more detail oriented flashbacks are used a couple of times to give us context of what her relationship with him was like and how it is different than the new relationships she is developing, with her friends and with the MMC. There are also a couple of flashbacks about her past with her parents that give us little details about her difficult relationship with her father and her beautiful relationship with her mother. The reason that I loved this detail was because, through it, Henry was acknowledging how important understanding your past is. Every reaction or emotion or decision is affected in some way by your past experience, therefore understanding it is pivotal. And by providing some of that detail, Henry was able to establish a wonderful arc of development and growth for the FMC that I actually think the intricacy of, is quite rare.

Part of why I loved her character development so much may have been because there were multiple things about her personality and her experience that I could relate to. So, when she starts to accept change, stand up to her ex, make friends, build her own life, and be honest with her parents, it felt like I was experiencing the freedom and courage right along with her. At one point, she realizes that the MMC loves her and she thinks, “it makes me feel brave, being loved by him. It makes me safe enough to do the thing I never could.” And bearing witness to her journey, in its own way, makes me feel brave enough to do the same.

Now, I mentioned earlier that I would discuss some of the character details, and man were there a lot of awesome ones. Emily Henry has always had fantastic banter in her books but this book was on another level in my opinion. There wasn’t too much that it became overpowering or cliche, and it was enough that you understood their sense of humor and it built their connection to the point that when they used it to lighten the mood in tense situations, it was believable and actually helped relieve some of the tension for the reader. Another detail I appreciated was the silent conversations between the main characters. There were only two or three, but staying consistent with a detail that small, helps you feel invested in their relationship, and makes it clear that they are growing in their understanding and care for each other. 

Another detail that is mentioned two or three times is the FMC’s almost involuntary moan when she eats or drinks something delicious. This is a detail that obviously has no major sway in the story but including this is hilarious, and a great way of humanizing a character. Humanizing characters and making them relatable is not always an easy thing to do but Henry does it so well. Even the way that the MMC finds ways to care for the FMC are subtle but heart wrenching in the best way. He notices where she gets coffee from and gets her one, then gets her chai the next time because she mentioned that she doesn’t drink coffee. He offers her his bed when her dad comes to visit so she doesn’t have to sleep on the couch and he calls off work to comfort her when her dad ditches town. They seem like little things but those are the details that we want our friends and loved ones to notice and take action on.

The beautiful thing is how these small acts of love transition smoothly into what I call the “love confessions”. Each character has their individual speech that they give where they express their feelings and explain how they came to love the other person, and I just found these so raw and realistic. Honestly, there were lines that were so simple that it actually felt like something I would say to someone, rather than the most beautifully written speech that sounds like it came from Shakespeare. They mention their pasts, they mention their own shortcomings, and they acknowledge the little things that they love about each other and the combination of those just makes it hit a little bit deeper.

Something else that hits deep with Emily Henry is her descriptions, specifically when it comes to things that we appreciate in life but don’t often take the time to describe why. The FMC is a children’s librarian and early on in the book she explains why she loves it. She thinks, “as an adult, I find kids so much easier to understand. They say how they feel, and they show it too. There are fewer ulterior motives and unwritten rules. Silences aren’t unbearably awkward, and abrupt segues to different subjects are the norm. If you want to be friends with someone, you just ask, and if they don’t want to, they’ll probably just tell you.” I believe this is why Jesus tells us to be like a child in the Bible because there is so much we can learn from how they operate with open hearts and genuine excitement and honesty. But we also have to accept that we are bound to change as we interact with people and get hurt, so the question is, how do you find the balance of protecting yourself and living life with the joyful abandon of a child.
Another instance of Henry’s descriptive prowess comes when the MMC asks the FMC how the “library thing” started and the reason behind her reply of Narnia is the reason why I love books. The character thinks, “I cast my mind back…all the way to the first moment I remember loving a story. Feeling like I was living it. Being, even as a child, bowled over by how something imaginary could become real, could wring every emotion from me or make me homesick for places I’d never been.” It’s a short, and simple description, but I think it’s a lot of people’s reason for their love of fiction. It is an escape from the world, but it’s also a way to self-reflect, a way to let your emotions out, a way to dream, to imagine, to love, to mourn, to create. To just be, without the constraints or pressures of the world. And I am so grateful for an author like Emily Henry, who provides the space for that in her stories.

Finally, I cannot review this book without talking about the title. The book opens with the FMC telling us that she is not good at telling her own story, so she lets her ex tell it. And it ends with someone asking about how she and the MMC met, and he says, “Funny story…” and then stops, because he knows how much she loves to tell it. And if that is not the best, full circle, indication of development, and tie-in of the book title that I have ever read, I’m not sure what is. They don’t become perfect people, she may still think she isn’t that good at telling stories, but she loves their story so much that she doesn’t care. They embrace change, they know how to laugh at themselves, and they create their own perfect life together. And so, I must say that this Funny Story is one of the most beautiful stories I have read in a long time.