Ultimate Emily Henry Reading Guide + Easter Eggs

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Last updated on April 4th, 2024

How do you read Emily Henry’s books in order, and how are they all connected? Find out the answers to these questions and more in this guide.

With 8 books under her belt spanning both the Young Adult and Contemporary Romance genres, Henry has established herself as a staple among romance readers.

About The Author

Fun Facts

Writing Journey

Emily Henry’s journey into the literary world began in elementary school when she was asked to write a story. While most kids only wrote a few sentences, Emily wrote an astonishing 27 pages about a submarine-driving toad who discovers an underwater city.

Although creative writing was her passion, Emily worked several jobs – including dog walking, babysitting, Taco Bell, the YMCA, her college’s tutoring center, and a carwash – before drafting her first book.

After graduating from Hope College in Michigan and moving back to her hometown of Cincinnati, she settled into a technical writing job at the city’s phone and cable company. During this time, she discovered that “nothing makes the creative spirit bloom more than a mind-numbing job.”

She produced four young adult novels in three years that were well-received and sold modestly. However, due to the fast pace of production, she felt burnt out and believed she had nothing more to say about teenagers. This led Emily to yearn for a fresh direction.

In 2019, she experienced anxiety and writer’s block, prompting her to switch gears and explore a lighter, more heartwarming genre – romance – which led to the birth of “Beach Read.” However, the book was temporarily shelved due to a skeptical subplot about death cults.

Then, the “romance renaissance” of the late 2010s and the unexpected turn of events during the pandemic occurred. As readers sought solace and escape in the embrace of romance novels, Emily’s manuscript found its moment. Released in May 2020, “Beach Read” soared to incredible heights, resonating with countless hearts yearning for a literary warm hug.

Book Awards

People We Meet On Vacation – 2021 Goodreads Choice Award Winner for Best Romance 🏆

Book Lovers – 2022 Goodreads Choice Award Winner for Best Romance 🏆

NOMINATIONS:

Authors Similar to Emily Henry

If you’re looking even more authors that are similar to Emily Henry, check out this Bookriot’s post.

How To Read Emily Henry’s Books In Order

Young Adult

Adult Contemporary Romance

Upcoming Releases of 2024

RELEASE DATE: April 23, 2024

Synopsis

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?

Are Emily Henry’s Books Connected?

Even though all of her books are standalone, there are fun little easter eggs hidden in each novel. See below for all of them.

Freeman’s Bookstore

University of Michigan

The Novel – Curmudgeon

Supporting Each Other

The Layover Epilogue

The Love That Split The World

TROPE: science-fiction, insta-love

TWs: PTSD, car accident, alcoholism, death, sexual assault

Synopsis

Natalie’s last summer in her small Kentucky hometown is off to a magical start . . . until she starts seeing the “wrong things.” They’re just momentary glimpses at first—her front door is red instead of its usual green, and there’s a preschool where the garden store should be. But then her whole town disappears for hours, fading away into rolling hills and grazing buffalo, and Nat knows something isn’t right.

Then there are the visits from the kind but mysterious apparition she calls “Grandmother,” who tells her, “You have three months to save him.” The next night, under the stadium lights of the high school football field, she meets a beautiful boy named Beau, and it’s as if time just stops and nothing exists. Nothing, except Natalie and Beau.

A Million Junes

TROPE: fantasy/magical realism, star-crossed lovers/forbidden love

TWs: grief and loss, death of a parent, death of a child, cancer, accidental drowning

Synopsis

In their hometown of Five Fingers, Michigan, the O’Donnells and the Angerts have mythic legacies. But for all the tall tales they weave, both founding families are tight-lipped about what caused the century-old rift between them, except to say it began with a cherry tree.

Eighteen-year-old Jack “June” O’Donnell doesn’t need a better reason than that. She’s an O’Donnell to her core, just like her late father was, and O’Donnells stay away from Angerts. Period.

But when Saul Angert, the son of June’s father’s mortal enemy, returns to town after three mysterious years away, June can’t seem to avoid him. Soon, the unthinkable happens: She finds she doesn’t exactly hate the gruff, sarcastic boy she was born to loathe. 

Saul’s arrival sparks a chain reaction, and as the magic, ghosts, and coywolves of Five Fingers conspire to reveal the truth about the dark moment that started the feud, June must question everything she knows about her family and the father she adored. And she must decide whether it’s finally time for her—and all of the O’Donnells before her—to let go.

When The Sky Fell On Splendor

TROPE: found family, science fiction, mystery

TWs: death, kidnapping, grief

Synopsis

Almost everyone in the small town of Splendor, Ohio, was affected when the local steel mill exploded. If you weren’t a casualty of the accident yourself, chances are a loved one was. That’s the case for seventeen-year-old Franny, who, five years after the explosion, still has to stand by and do nothing as her brother lies in a coma. 

In the wake of the tragedy, Franny found solace in a group of friends whose experiences mirrored her own. The group calls themselves The Ordinary, and they spend their free time investigating local ghost stories and legends, filming their exploits for their small following of YouTube fans. It’s silly, it’s fun, and it keeps them from dwelling on the sadness that surrounds them.

Until one evening, when the strange and dangerous thing they film isn’t fiction–it’s a bright light, something massive hurtling toward them from the sky. And when it crashes, and the teens go to investigate…everything changes.

Hello Girls

TROPE: Female friendships, road trips

TWs: drugs, alcohol, domestic abuse, parental abuse, disordered eating, gambling, murder, gun violence, mentions of prostitution, Alzheimer’s

Synopsis

Winona has been starving for life in the seemingly perfect home that she shares with her seemingly perfect father, celebrity weatherman Stormy Olsen. No one knows that he locks the pantry door to control her eating and leaves bruises where no one can see them.

Lucille has been suffocating beneath the needs of her mother and her drug-dealing brother, wondering if there’s more out there for her than disappearing waitress tips and a lifetime of barely getting by.

One harrowing night, Winona and Lucille realize they can’t wait until graduation to start their new lives. They need out. Now. One hour later, they’re armed with a plan that will take them from their small Michigan town to Chicago.

All they need is three grand, fast. And really, a stolen convertible can’t hurt.

Chased by the oppression, toxicity, and powerlessness that has held them down, Winona and Lucille must reclaim their strength if they are going to make their daring escape—and get away with it.

Beach Read

TROPE: enemies to lovers

TWs: grieving lost parents, discussions of cancer & treatments, references to parental abuse, descriptions of cults, vague reference to infant death, mentions of infidelity, mentions of divorce

Synopsis

Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romances. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast. 

They’re polar opposites. 

In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they’re living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer’s block.

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another, and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book, and no one will fall in love. Really.

People We Meet On Vacation

TROPE: Friends to lovers

TWs: death of a parent (past), grief, bullying (past), infidelity 

Synopsis

Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year, they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together. 

Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since. 

Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees. 

Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?

Is People We Meet On Vacation the same book as You and Me on Vacation?

In short, yes it is! People We Meet On Vacation is the US version, and You and Me On Vacation is the UK version.

While the UK title is straightforward, there is a special meaning behind the title in the US version that readers can find out at the end of the book.

There is also a summary difference on the back of the book. While People We Meet On Vacation has the typical blurb to entice readers to purchase the book, You and Me On Vacation shows Alex and Poppy’s relationship timeline for those (like me) who want an easier-to-understand format to follow.

Book Lovers

TROPE: Enemies to lovers

TWs: death of parent, grief

Synopsis

One summer. Two rivals. A plot twist they didn’t see coming…

Nora Stephens’ life is books—she’s read them all—and she is not that type of heroine. Not the plucky one, not the laidback dream girl, and especially not the sweetheart. In fact, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, for whom she lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby.

Which is why she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for the month of August when Libby begs her for a sisters’ trip away—with visions of a small town transformation for Nora, who she’s convinced needs to become the heroine in her own story. But instead of picnics in meadows, or run-ins with a handsome country doctor or bulging-forearmed bartender, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor from back in the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they’ve met many times, and it’s never been cute.

If Nora knows she’s not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again—in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow—what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves.

Happy Place

TROPE: Fake dating, second chance

TWs: depression, anxiety, parent with chronic illness

Synopsis

Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now—for reasons they’re still not discussing—they don’t.

They broke up five months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.

Which is how they find themselves sharing a bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blissful week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.

Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts.

Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week…in front of those who know you best?

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