I’m sitting in a semicircle of zoomers and zillennials, tucked in the fluorescent-lit corner of Savannah’s Oglethorpe Mall Barnes & Noble. It’s Saturday, April 27, four days after Emily Henry’s “Funny Story” hit bookstore shelves, and this bleak gathering is nowhere near the extravagant release party I’d pictured. Of course, I’ve always been idealistic, expecting perfection when life is just the opposite. It seems myself and Henry’s new leading lady, Daphne, share this in common.
Daphne lives a picket fence life as a librarian in Waning Bay, Michigan, with her Ken-coded fiancé, Peter. Until, of course, Peter proclaims passionate love for his childhood best friend, Petra, leading Daphne to move out of their home and in with Petra’s ex, Miles. Daphne didn’t plan on being dumped or living with a stoner who uses “Bridget Jones’s Diary” (2001) as a coping mechanism. But as Daphne soon learns, “Sometimes the unexpected is better than what you plan.”
As someone who regularly updates their Google Calendar and never shops without a grocery list, reading this line from “Funny Story” felt almost like a personal attack. However, I’m aware that there’s some truth to this statement. When I first arrived at college, my goal was to study film and become the next Greta Gerwig, and for a while, that’s what I attempted to do. I worked on student sets and wrote scripts, but I could feel my dream changing and my dissatisfaction growing. The choice became clear: I could either persist in my misery or take a leap of faith (i.e. change my major).
I turned to books in search of answers and, at a particularly low point, I found myself thumbing through my personal copy of Henry’s “Beach Read” (2020). Something inside of me screamed, This is it. This is what you need to do. “But what if I make this shift, and it still doesn’t work out?” I asked the little voice, and you know what it said? So, what? Life is a series of choices, and you can’t waste time anticipating every imaginable consequence. Sometimes, you have to call your mom, cry (a lot), and hope that you’ve made the right decision. It doesn’t always work out, but, hey, I’ve been a writing major for over a year now, so do with that what you will.
Henry’s career itself has been somewhat a product of chance (and hard work). “When I was growing up, romance, as a genre, was treated as the butt of a joke. That message was instilled in me so deeply that I’d never even read a romance novel until I was about 25,” said Henry in an interview with The New York Times. Henry initially had zero intention of publishing “Beach Read,” which she wrote as a hobby between the releases of her YA novels “A Million Junes” (2017) and “Hello Girls” (2019). “I tripped sideways into romance as both a writer and a reader,” Henry told TODAY, “and I was just delighted to find out that I really love it as both a writer and a reader.”
With five New York Times bestselling romance novels under her belt (and multiple film adaptations in the works), Henry has obviously done something right. I’ll let you in on a little secret, it’s her authenticity. Henry’s first adult romance, “Beach Read,” spawned from the grief she experienced following the passing of her childhood dog. This becomes evident in the novel, where loss pervades every relationship, just as fear and mistrust form a throughline in Henry’s “Funny Story.” She isn’t afraid of subjecting her characters to the “real stuff,” which makes their inevitable happily ever afters that much more deserved. That’s what I find most attractive about Henry’s narratives. Her characters make you want to root for them in spite of their flaws.
Speaking of flaws, it’s been a month since I attended the aforementioned “Funny Story” release party, and these past four weeks have given me some much needed time to reflect. At first, I wondered if the lackluster production quality of the event was a marketing ploy, since Henry herself believes that, “A lot of times, bad things happening, in surprising ways, is what makes a story funny.” I know now that the party was probably patchworked together in an attempt to appease overzealous fans like myself, and for that, I’m grateful.
It’s quirky, imperfect moments, like this Barnes & Noble gathering, that contain flecks of the unexpected beauty that makes life so remarkable. I see now the things that I missed that day. Two best friends snapping a selfie in their matching “Happy Place” t-shirts. A couple leaning over a Mad Lib, bumping elbows as they fill in the blanks. My own friends blurting out book trivia. A group of women who share my similar passion for books.
“So many of the most beautiful things in life are unexpected,” Daphne says toward the end of “Funny Story,” and like her, I’m finally starting to believe it.
Words by Alex Armbruster
Graphic by Aubrey Lauer