Someone in my group chat asks “where do I even start with Emily Henry” at least once a year, and every time, four different people give four different answers with the same amount of conviction. That’s the actual sign of a good backlist. Not that everyone agrees on the best book, but that everyone’s willing to fight about it.
So here’s my ranking, for anyone who wants an actual answer instead of five people talking over each other. Emily Henry books ranked from “solid, glad I read it” to “changed how I think about the genre,” plus where to start depending on what you’re actually looking for.
Happy Place
Starting at the bottom, not because it’s bad but because everything above it is doing more: Happy Place is the one where a recently broken-up couple has to fake still being together for a week at a friend group’s annual lake house trip, because nobody else knows they split. It has the biggest ensemble cast of any Henry book, which is part of the charm and part of why the central romance sometimes gets crowded out. Still genuinely funny, still lands its emotional beats. Just not the tightest of the six.
Funny Story
Funny Story moves things up a level. Daphne gets left by her fiancé for his childhood best friend, then ends up as roommates with that best friend’s ex, Miles, for reasons that make more sense in the book than they do summarized in a sentence. It’s Henry doing something quieter and a little sadder than her earlier work, more about rebuilding an identity after a breakup than about the romance itself, though the romance is there and it’s good. Start here if you want the version of her writing that’s grown up a little.
People We Meet on Vacation
People We Meet on Vacation is the one most people already have opinions about, and those opinions are correct. Poppy and Alex take one trip together every year and haven’t spoken in two. This book is about the disastrous trip that caused the silence and the reconciliation trip meant to fix it. It’s the platonic-friends-who-obviously-aren’t-platonic structure done about as well as it’s been done, and the dual-timeline format, where each summer gets its own chapter, is doing real work, not just filler.
🛒 Shop People We Meet On Vacation on Amazon
Beach Read
Beach Read is where all of this started, and it holds up. A literary novelist with writer’s block and a romance novelist who’s stopped believing in love end up next door to each other for a summer, and they make a deal: she’ll write something literary, he’ll write something happy, and they’ll help each other figure out how. It’s the most writer-about-writing of her books, which either delights you or doesn’t, but the central swap, genre as a stand-in for how differently these two people see the world, is the smartest structural idea in her whole backlist.
Book Lovers
Book Lovers is the one that argues with the genre it’s part of. Nora Stephens is a literary agent who knows exactly what role she’s supposed to play in a small-town rom-com, the workaholic city woman who gets shown the error of her ways by a charming local, and refuses to play it. Instead she gets an actual person, Charlie, who doesn’t need fixing and doesn’t need her to be fixed either. It’s the sharpest, funniest entry in the backlist, and the one most worth reading twice.
Great Big Beautiful Life
And at the top: Great Big Beautiful Life is Henry doing something genuinely different, and it’s the strongest thing she’s written (I know, controversial). Two journalists, Alice and Hayden, compete for the chance to write the biography of Margaret Ives, a reclusive former heiress who’s decided, after decades of silence, to finally tell her story. Except she tells Alice and Hayden two different versions, and neither of them knows why. It’s a mystery wearing a romance’s clothes, structured across two timelines that explain each other slowly, and it’s the first time Henry’s ambition has fully matched her instincts. Start here if you want to see what she’s capable of when she’s not repeating herself.
🛒 Shop Great Big Beautiful Life on Amazon
A quick FAQ, since I get asked this constantly. Do you need to read Emily Henry’s books in order? No. None of them are connected, so you can start anywhere. Where should you actually start, though? If you want funny and low-stakes, start with Book Lovers. If you want the most emotionally layered, start with Great Big Beautiful Life. If you just want the one everyone’s already talking about, start with Beach Read and read the rest in whatever order your library holds come in.
What ties all six of these together, ranking aside, is that Henry keeps writing the same question from different angles: what do you owe the version of yourself you used to be, and what do you owe the one you’re becoming. Read them all this summer. You’ve got the time, and she’s earned it.
xx laura
