Harriet thought the worse was behind her. When things ended between her and her longtime boyfriend/fiancé, Wyn, Harriet thought her life had ended. But she picked up the pieces and is now looking forward to her annual summer trip with her college best friends, Sabrina and Cleo, where she will reveal her relationship with Wyn is over.

Except that’s not what happens. Sabrina and her boyfriend are getting married that weekend and have invited Wyn to join them. To avoid ruining their special day, Harriet and Wyn agree to a ceasefire and pretend to still be in love and engaged. As the week goes on, Harriet and Wyn find themselves slipping into old habits and asking the question, are they still in love with each other?

Emily Henry has sort of become the queen of modern day romances and is a BookTok darling. I’ve seen many people rave about her books and perhaps because of that I’ve been hesitant to pick up one of them, feeling they wouldn’t live up to the hype. But then Ms. Henry released a book with a vibrant, hot pink cover and Target ran a buy 2 get 1 free special on their books and here we are.

This book had a good premise; lovers to enemies and possibly back to lovers again. I also liked the idea of the couple hiding the state of their true relationship from their friends, and the summer getaway location. Yet, what I feared would happen did happen.

I don’t think the book lived up to the hype.

Romance books can sometimes be fairly formulaic and although I had a pretty strong suspicion I knew how the book ended, I was still won over enough by the story (and the gorgeous cover) to grab it and give it a read. But that’s not the reason why I didn’t like this book. I didn’t like it for one major, big reason; Wyn.

For the life of me I couldn’t understand why Harriet was so enamored with this man. Yes, he’s nice and clearly a family person, but he’s hardly supportive of Harriet’s career ambitions and seems to blame her for a lot of the issues in their relationship. That is not to say Harriet is completely blameless and one does have to take into consideration that when the relationship ends Wyn is going through a very difficult family tragedy, but I just couldn’t get on board with them being a couple.

But what really took the cake for me was how the relationship ended between Harriet and Wyn. Throughout the story the reader gets the impression that the engagement ended because of something Harriet did, an idea seemingly reinforced by Wyn, who seems to be doing everything possible to get back into a relationship with Harriet. However, when that part of the story is finally revealed and the reader learns the truth, that it was Wyn who ended the relationship, not Harriet, and when he chose to do it, I was left infuriated. Again, Wyn was going through a hard time but Harriet did nothing to him, supported him through his mourning, and did not take a temptation that was propositioned to her, a proposition that deeply upset Harriet and caused her to tell Wyn, who them promptly cut ties with Harriet. That completely soured my feelings for their relationship. To me, Wyn didn’t have the skills and maturity to be in a relationship with Harriet and the fact that she, in the end, changes her entire life to make this work was just frustrating.

The book is also long, far too long for a romance and is very sluggish in some places. I did like the dynamics going on between Harriet and her two roommates, to the point I wished that was the main storyline instead, but also here there are some issues. Sabrina can be very overwhelming and perhaps do some questionable things but Harriet and Cleo fail to realize Sabrina’s own struggles and that, at the end of the day, she’s just trying to be a good friend who desperately misses the “old days.” Cleo comes off as very cranky and uninterested in keeping these friendships. Again, she has her own personal struggles but it doesn’t really justify her rude behavior towards Sabrina.

So the question is, will I ever read an Emily Henry book again? Possibly, but not any time soon. To me, Ms. Henry’s books are nothing really special and if I found a copy of another book of hers at a Goodwill or free little library I would give it a chance. Perhaps this was not one of her better works. However, there are plenty of other authors who do romance much better and I much rather read one of theirs in the future than pay full price for an Emily Henry so-so romance.

3 out of 5 stars