Notes from the Shelf

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Happy Place by Emily Henry is a 400-page romance novel set in Maine. Three couples go on their annual getaway to a Maine cottage, but one of them hasn’t broke the news that they’ve broken up. Harriet and Wyn have been the golden couple, the one the others look to for a relationship that has worked over the years despite long-distance issues as Harriet becomes a surgeon in San Francisco and Wyn takes care of his ailing mother in Montana. But something happened six months ago, and they’re still not talking about it, which is how they find themselves on their annual getaway trip stuck in the master room king bed together. When they find out that the cottage is being sold and this will be the last of their annual getaways, Harriet and Wyn pretend to still be together to not break their friends’ hearts. It can’t be that hard to fake it for one week when they were in love for years, right?

I have a lot of opinions about this book, so there will definitely be major spoilers ahead.

First, I want to talk about Harriet being from a “southern Indiana town,” which I took to mean a small town, too, so I was thinking somewhere like Vincennes. Later it’s revealed that she’s from Indianapolis! I’m from Indianapolis; it is as central as you can get in Indiana, and it’s the biggest city in Indiana. It really took me out of the story that it was described as a “southern Indiana town.”

Also, Harriet saying lavatory took me out of the story so hard. I can almost guarantee that no one from Indiana or the Midwest will say lavatory. I haven’t heard any American say lavatory, although maybe some do in some regions, but definitely not if you’re from Indiana, so that really confused me.

Another thing is how Harriet and Wyn broke up. I thought something huge happened to cause an argument and them breaking up, but it was just that Harriet got a ride from her co-worker, who ended up kissing her, and she was clearly upset by it and called Wyn to tell him, and then he breaks up with her?? At this point they are engaged, so for him to call off the wedding for that is crazy. There were other underlying reasons for him to do it, but that is the worst moment to break up with someone. If someone did that to me, I wouldn’t take him back. He basically victim-blamed her instead of having her back. My trust would forever be broken if I came to my fiancé with something like that and he freaked out on me about it.

And then for Harriet to just take the break up and not ask him why or have any argument over it or anything is crazy to me. They were together eight years, they are engaged, Wyn says he wants to break up and she just lets him with zero conversation? She blocks his number instead, so they literally cannot talk about it further. Crazy. Harriet needs therapy because she is so conflict averse that she can’t fight for her relationship. She just avoids ever talking about it.

Most of the characters seemed unlikeable to me, but the most was Sabrina. Sabrina acted like a spoiled child the whole time, and it was really hard to believe she was in her early 30s and that she was actually friends with the other characters.

Before the getaway, Sabrina and Parth were supposed to visit Cleo and Kimmy at their farm, but Cleo had to cancel, and the whole story Sabrina never gives it up. She is constantly jabbing at Cleo for it and took it so personally, and it really bothered me. Cleo and Kimmy are running a full farm, that’s a full-time job and stuff happens constantly on a farm that needs attending to. It’s not some vacation spot that Sabrina and Parth can pop in on. It seemed really insensitive of Sabrina to continually bring it up.

Also, Sabrina really seems entitled. She makes the last annual getaway an impromptu wedding for her and Parth, so now instead of it being a relaxing week with friends, it becomes the Sabrina Show to make sure she has a nice wedding, and everyone is on edge making sure they stay happy for her to have good memories of the place and the wedding. Also, Cleo and Kimmy were not planning to stay the whole week because it’s so hard for them to take that much time away from the farm, but then they felt they had to stay for the wedding. Wyn was also not going to stay the whole week—he wasn’t even supposed to go at all since him and Harriet broke up—but he also felt he had to stay for the wedding, and Harriet and Wyn felt they had to pretend to be a happy couple.

Sabrina makes an itinerary for everyone for the whole week, down to the last minute, including bathroom breaks, which is absolutely insane. She seems like such a huge control freak and it doesn’t seem like she views these people as friends. And Harriet tries to go along with everything to keep the peace, which is so sad. Again, Harriet needs therapy. Cleo is the only one who wants to say things to Sabrina about how she’s acting, but Harriet keeps convincing Cleo to keep the peace until it all blows up toward the end.

 Also, Sabrina wanting to get matching tattoos with everyone as a last hurrah of the trip is wild. She assumes everyone will do it without discussing with anyone ahead of time, because they’ve all talked about it in the past. But talking about it as a nebulous concept, like “oh yeah, we should get matching tattoos one day” vs designing the tattoo, booking a tattoo artist, paying the artist to stay late to do six tattoos in one day and bringing everyone to the tattoo parlor as a surprise is very different.

She didn’t consult anyone about the design, except maybe Parth, and expected everyone to be okay with getting a tattoo that day. It’s one thing she did this, but then she was so mad when no one went along with it. She clearly doesn’t know Harriet to think she would be okay with it. She probably just thinks Harriet will go along with it like she does with everything else, just to make Sabrina happy. I’m glad everyone else didn’t go along with it either, because then Harriet would’ve felt the need to also do it. It’s also wild that I assume she told Parth and he didn’t think it was a bad idea, like didn’t try to talk her out of it? Also, Sabrina just assumed Cleo would get the tattoo because she already has tattoos. That was not okay to assume. Getting a new tattoo is a big decision, even if you already have some. Sabrina definitely needs therapy as well.

I respected Cleo for calling Sabrina on her shenanigans and giving her a wake-up call that their lives are different than in college, and that’s perfectly okay and reasonable to be different. It seemed like Sabrina and Parth were clinging to the good ole days of college instead of moving on and growing up.

Cleo was my favorite character for sure. She seemed the only one to actually be 30 years old, although it was weird she didn’t tell any of her lifelong friends that she is currently pregnant! I can’t imagine being with my friend group that I’ve known since college and not telling them that I’m pregnant. It doesn’t seem like this group of friends is really all that close, and it made me sad.

Back to Harriet. Harriet giving up her whole career at the end to make pottery instead really bothered me. I understand people get burnt out, and it takes a lot to go through medical school and everything, but that seemed insane to me that she would give up her childhood dream that she’s worked so hard for.

I understand her current place was giving her massive anxiety and she wasn’t happy, but there are other areas of medicine she could’ve explored instead of just dropping the whole thing. She could’ve been in hospice or a home care situation, taking care of Wyn’s mom and working more one-on-one with patients to have time to learn about them and actually emotionally connect with them. To drop her whole career with her massive student loan debt and to make pottery instead, which usually wouldn’t make much unless you’re lucky, seemed too unbelievable to me. I don’t understand why she didn’t at least try exploring other areas in medicine, or seeing how the hospital would be in Montana.

“Even when something beautiful breaks, the making of it still matters.” This quote really touched me, just wanted to throw that in here.

Overall, I didn’t like Happy Place as much as Beach Read. I found it to be a mostly melancholy mood and there were a lot of different things that made me mad about the characters. It didn’t seem like much of a romance. I don’t really like second chance romances anyway, so maybe this wasn’t the book for me. I give Happy Place 2 stars.

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