OK, I think I finally reached my limit of how much Emily Henry I can stomach. Second book I read that I completely disliked, even though I previously liked 2 others. Let’s call it even.

• Book Lovers * Emily Henry 5/5
• Great Big Beautiful Life – Emily Henry 5/5
• People we meet on vacation 2/5

Two exes. One pact.
Could this holiday change everything?

Harriet and Wyn are the perfect couple – they go together like bread and butter, gin and tonic, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds.

Every year, they take a holiday from their lives to drink far too much wine with their favourite people in the world.

Except this year, they are lying through their teeth, because Harriet and Wyn broke up six months ago. And they still haven’t told anyone.

But the cottage is for sale so this is the last time they’ll all be here together. They can’t bear to break their best friends’ hearts so they’ll fake it for one more week.

But how can you pretend to be in love – and get away with it – in front of the people who know you best?

Think of your happy place, the cool voice in my ear instructs.
Picture it. Glimmering blue washes across the backs of my eyes.
How does it smell? Wet rock, brine, butter sizzling in a deep fryer, and a spritz of lemon on the tip of my tongue.
What do you hear? Laughter, the slap of water against the bluffs, the hiss of the tide drawing back over sand and stone.
What can you feel? Sunlight, everywhere. Not just on my bare shoulders or the crown of my head but inside me too, the irresistible warmth that comes only from being in the exact right place with the exact right people.

Here you have a book about a woman called “Harry” who spends her time relieving her best days from her youth which she calls “her happy place” instead of the dreadful present. The chapters intermingle past and present and we get to see her friendship with two other girls (Sabrina and Cleo) blossoming during the college days, then her meeting Wyn, the love of her life, then all of them getting jobs (some in the field they graduated in, some in completely new fields) and then all of them meeting for a surprise wedding invite.

Unfortunately, Harry and Wyn had already broken off their engagement prior to arriving at Sabrina and Parth’s secret wedding and Cleo and her girlfriend were strained by the sudden invite as they had to scramble to get someone else to look after their farm while they were away.

So you have two crabby couples having to act happy for the newly engaged and soon to be married. Tensions rise and it comes to a head when the bride to be suggests all 6 of them get matching tattoos. Rightfully, Cleo is pissed that someone can take a decision about getting a tattoo and strong arm everyone into it without first discussing what design, where to put it and whether they would be ok with it.

Harry and Wyn’s relationship failure also comes to light, even though they pretended they were still together just for this weekend.

I found it very, very offputting how every single time Harry looked at Wyn she would just gush about him. It started grating on me that he never really had any flaws. He was just so perfect.

He looks like he’s mostly made out of granite, except for his mouth, which is pure quicksand. Soft, full, one side of his Cupid’s bow noticeably higher.

Even now, I’d buy Wyn-scented candles in bulk if I could, keep them long after the wicks had burned down, until every last vapor faded from the glass.

His neck, his shoulders, his waist, the soft hair that leads to his waistband, the jut of his hip bones. The smooth curves of his back and the tightening muscles of his stomach. Every piece of him I’ve thought about, dreamed of, longed for.

I knew the only thing more painful than being without him would be being together knowing I no longer truly had him

I think the book is supposed to be a romance but it might be giving girls the wrong ideas if they are looking for such a perfect partner – both in looks and in mood. People are allowed to be grumpy, cranky, depressed after loosing their father. People can sail through hardship or chip at it one stone at a time.

She’s so not over him and clearly he sees her too. The entire book is a painful “forced rekindling of a relationship under stress” which won’t ever work in a real case scenario. Both of them lack boundaries and instead of communicating like adults, they just grind against each other like teenagers.

“Tell me to kiss you,” he says again, nudging my thighs wider to ease in between my hips.
I rake my hands down his back, take hold of his waist, keeping us pinned together. I feel his pulse in his groin, or maybe it’s mine. The lines between him and me have become fuzzy, insubstantial.
“What are we doing?” he asks.
“I thought that was obvious,” I say.
His hips rock into me, and god help me, my hands go straight to his ass. He lifts me against the door, my thighs around his hips, my arms hooked behind his head, his erection hard against me.
I want him on top of me, beneath me, behind me. I want him in my mouth, his clothes in a pile on the floor, his sweat on my stomach, his voice rough against my ear. I want anything other than to stop.
“What does this mean,” he asks raggedly, still cupping me, kissing me.
“I don’t know,” I say.
A low, frustrated sound dies in the back of his throat, and he stills, holding me firmly against the door.
“This is a bad idea, Harriet,” he says hoarsely after a few seconds, lowering me but not stepping back. “We can’t be together.”

Yet they mix alcohol and bad decisions and Harry decides to wear some sexy dresses, go all out to be all over Wyn on their trips with the other two couples and fake affection.

Wyn shifts uncomfortably. What did he call it? Vindictive grinding?
I drain my soda like it’s my last shot of moonshine before an 1800s doctor pries a bullet from my arm, and then lean forward exaggeratedly again to return my glass to the table

The grinding escalates to kissing and then second base touching.

His hands slide roughly behind my hips, canting them up to him. “We shouldn’t do this while you’re upset anyway,” he says.
I move my hand down him. “I’ll be less upset once you’re inside me.”

I mean, what could possibly go wrong trying to have sex with the ex who dumped you on your best friend’s bachelorette? I don’t know. The story just didn’t click for me. I know it’s supposed to be a light summer read about friendship and romance, but I’m starting to see parallels between books by the same author due to reading them so close together. It’s always a bouncy and energetic woman with a sad and reclusive man who also happens to be sexy and in this case highly successful at making outdoor and indoor furniture out of wood. They take a relationship that should work and they fail it for stupid reasons (in this case it was because he thought he no longer fitted in Harry’s new hospital life due to her brutal shifts and tired ass). They break up and nobody knows but they get back together and guess what, the feelings never left and proper communication and compromise save the day.

I can’t say I agree with their solution: for Harry to abandon her medical school studies, obtained with great effort and even greater loans to become a potter, because that’s what makes her happy. She’s not good at it (she admitted it) and she still has the loans to pay off, and her parents are going to be gutted but she’s following her dreams.

“I don’t want to be tired all the time. I don’t want to be on opposite schedules from everyone I love, or on call during dates. I don’t want to be on my feet for eight hours at a time and have my knuckles bleed in the winter from overwashing my hands. I don’t want to feel like I don’t have time or energy to try anything new because everything I have is getting poured into a job I don’t even like. I don’t want to live my life like it’s a triathlon and all that matters is getting to some imaginary ribbon. I want my life to be like—like making pottery. I want to enjoy it while it’s happening, not just for where it might get me eventually.

Urgh. I’d hate to be her parents. But hey, at least she’s with the man she loves and who loves her back and they got a future together in arts and crafts, even though he has a business degree and she finished medical school with high grades.

“I will always love you,” he says fiercely. “That’s the point, Harriet. It’s the only thing that’s ever come naturally to me. The thing I don’t have to work at. I loved you all the way across the fucking country, and at my darkest, on my worst days, I still love you more than I’ve ever loved anything else

I believe we need to try and reinforce and romanticise the constant communication and work that two people who truly love each other need to put in to keep connected as life interrupts their union. I can’t remember ever having read a book with so many ‘- what? – nothing.’ sulking, childish conversations. It took up 78% of the story before there was a decent discussion. There was a point where I felt so annoyed with Wyn saying ‘Harriet’ but nothing else that I was ready to abadon the book. Their reluctance to communicate and try to solve their problems or just be honest made both Wyn and Harriet very unlikable to me, and you know what, if that’s all they’re capable of then they don’t deserve a happy ending. A bit shallow, inconsistent, with very little character development and zero laughs, I find the whole story a bit half-baked.