Roommates Gone Wild

I recently finished reading Funny Story by Emily Henry.

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT

  Rating: 4/5 stars

"Daphne always loved the way her fiancé, Peter, told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it... right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.

Which is how Daphne begins her new story: stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned-up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex... right?"

Bust out the tweed and toast your awkward roommate if you’ve got one, Emily Henry has a romcom for you. Sometimes, just when it feels like smooth sailing on the raft you call a life, an unexpected fucker of a wave smashes your plans to splinters and send you off course and adrift. Such is the case for Daphne whose life has been shipwrecked upon the shores of a Lake Michigan vacation town with the ex of her ex’s new fiance. You read that right, and these mutual exes are such a smart match they are practically named after each other, Peter and Petra, so out with the tweed and in with the twee I suppose. But, as Daphne learns, sometimes a shipwreck can be a new start to something more beautiful.

One of this books biggest strengths in allowing the narrative to wade through sorrows to create a portrait of adults discovering how to carry their own baggage and how their interactions with others are affected by it with a lot of the drama not being a miscommunication trope, per say, but more people tripping themselves up into confirmation bias based on their own personal traumas. It has some grit that grounds the otherwise breezy narrative and the real love story is learning to love oneself in order to love and be loved. It does wrap up a bit overly idyllic but honestly, I felt the biggest cracks in the veneer of the story was when it tried to make things happier than it probably needed to be but I understand why that is the case. With her signature witty banter, wry humor, and characters that are easy to fall in love with as they fall apart and into love themselves, Funny Story is a endearing tale about picking up the pieces only to discover oneself amidst the wreckage, learn to be yourself for yourself, and find a love where you least expect.

Alright let’s talk about love and stuff (surprise: the “stuff” is trauma!) I found Funny Story to read as a much quieter novel than most of Emily Henry’s works, but also found that, coupled with a slow-burn plot that lets scenes and character introspection really breathe, to be part of what made it so endearing for me. I felt like this was a successful version of the many things that story tried to be where the characters actually felt their age, the fake dating felt plausible, the third act drama was passably believable for the genre. It does try to tie up too many loose ends and solve all the issues and I don't think we needed that, but I suppose cliches are cliche for a reason and there are expectations in genres so thats more a me thing. And like, sure there's a lot to pick at but also it’s aiming to be a fun book and it lands that aspect while also managing to have a dynamic look at how past hurts can haunt our self-esteem and hinder our vulnerability when trying to connect with others and that helped hold the story together. One person's breakdown is another person’s novel glue I guess? Wait, I think I just finally understood literature.

This is a fairly character driven narrative of self-discovery and trauma processing that just so happens to stumble into romance so having the characters be in their early 30s helped bring this to life. Also that everything sucks and they just keep having to go to work and smile because they work public facing jobs–I FELT THAT SO HARD. Funny Story captures being an adult but not having the stable career/family/housing/etc that would make one “feel adult.” It's a very Millennial narrative where jokes like ‘are we evil or just immature?’ to laugh off behavior felt very true to life and all these characters seemed to walk onto the page directly out of the sort of single, early 30s service industry folks I’ve known and been friends with. But it also positions the characters in the wreckage of their Round 1 attempt at adulthood where they can no longer pretend they aren’t a product of their past and have to weigh out how their past traumas and coping mechanisms have embedded into their personalities. Especially since both Miles and Daphne are still reeling from hurts caused by the actions of their parents and don’t have a healthy relationship to serve as a compass for their own.

Since so much of dating involves understanding each other’s defense mechanisms and unpacking how past traumas inform your interpersonal relationships, being able to be vulnerable is important to intimacy and Funny Story does well by showing how frustrating it can be to open yourself up at the same emotional places where you are currently bruised.

While I’m not sure the scenes here really count as plot progression, I found the awkwardness that leaves the characters rather flustered and confused about their relationship to work as part of the character study that seems to be the focus of this book. Its a novel about finding yourself but thankfully its not white folks “finding themselves” by going to India or Joshua Tree listening to The Doors, its just getting high and watching action movies with your roommate and getting some “accidental” action of your own.

Learning to love oneself in all your faults and failures is difficult, but the joy in the discovery of what makes you “you” comes alive through Daphne quite well. The set up is pretty great and Henry launches you into it rather quickly. I do enjoy how it sort of mimics the set up in Book Lovers where she gets dumped in a very romcom ending. This is just another incident in a long line of feeling not important in the lives of those who claim to love you, and having had an absentee father taught her a few self-defense mechanisms long ago.

Emily Henry excels at capturing a sense of place and embedding it into her narratives as if the local community itself were a supporting cast character in her romcoms. It helps, too, that her locales tend to offer plenty of comedic relief along with their atmosphere. In Funny Story, however, we watch Daphne as she has to learn a new place being stuck in a Northern Michigan vacation community, but it is less the way learning a place is about learning to better understand her love interest and more about learning to understand herself. Luckily she is aided by her new roommate, Miles, who also had to find his way amidst this community after shipwrecking there himself. Henry captures these Michigan communities in highly specific and humorous ways while making it still relatable to those unfamiliar with them. Maybe I’m biased and Daphne being a librarian and Miles being a bartender at a cherry themed wine bar is just something I’d enjoy.

The side characters are great as well, like the younger sister who brings in a lot of heartfelt discussions on family dynamics in response to family traumas, or the single-mom librarian. I thought the age gap between siblings was explored in a pretty comically-true-to-life way and how it wasn’t miscommunication between them but just…lack of communicating at all because you just assume what the other person is thinking. Which, okay real. That plays into the third act drama as well where its less a miscommunication and more falling victim to your own confirmation bias and assumptions. But Miles is sweet. I really liked Miles. Did he do something sort of uncool at the end that Daphne is understandably upset about? Yes. Not great. But also did it feel like...well, something you'd hear a friend tell you about why their mad at a guy? Absolutely.

All in all, Funny Story is a sweet story of summer, libraries and finding joy in a new town and new friend. What I really loved about this book is how it just felt like people interacting with people and stumbling through their own issues instead of having some driving plot pushing people in directions. What I’m getting at is they felt like people instead of chess pieces for the sake of plot. The third act drama is done well too. Though when Henry tries to tell you that Michiganders refer to vacationers as “fudgies” for coming here to get our fudge (which is yum)...no we don’t. But the people from the Upper Peninsula DO in fact call the lower Peninsula “trolls.” Nobody in this novel says “ope” though, which is the Michigan noise for everything. Daphne should have said “ope” during a sex scene, I would have fallen over. Anyways, I enjoyed this and I hope you will too.

Check out Funny Story, and discover what happens when you fall for your roommate.

Happy Reading :)