From her early days as a creative prodigy, crafting tales of daring toads piloting submarines through hidden underwater cities, to her current status as a celebrated author, Emily Henry’s path has been remarkable. But her success is not just about her books; it’s also about the inspiration behind them, the experiences that have shaped her voice, and the stories that have resonated with readers around the globe.
With 8 books under her belt spanning both the Young Adult and Contemporary Romance genres, Emily Henry has established herself as a staple among romance readers. Whether you’re a longtime admirer of her work or a newcomer eager to discover a new favorite author, this guide breaks down everything you need to know about Emily Henry, including how she started her writing journey, some fun facts, and an in-depth dive into her books so you can choose which one to try next.
Table of contents
Table of contents
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emily Henry Fun Facts
Before she started writing adult romance, she dabbled in Young Adult
Childhood aspiration: writer or WNBA player (even though she says she has never played a game of basketball before)
Favourite day & place to write: facing a window in the morning
She has spent accumulative 145 weeks on the New York Times best seller list.
She has a deaf dog named Dottie that she often features on Instagram
She says the man in Henry’s fifth book (upcoming after Happy Place) is the most like her husband.
Book Lovers is the first book she wrote in the pandemic
3 of her books will be adapted for films – People We Meet On Vacation, Beach Read and Book Lovers
Surprising personal fact: She once won nine cakewalks in a row at a school carnival.
Emily Henry’s 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 road 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.
Authors similar to Emily Henry
If you’re looking even more authors that are similar to Emily Henry, check out this Bookriot’s post.
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how to read emily henry books in order
young adult books:
The Love that Split the World (2016)
A Million Junes (2017)
When the Sky Fell on Splendor (2019)
Hello Girls (2019) – cowritten with Brittany Cavallaro
People We Meet On Vacation – 2021 Goodreads Choice Award Winner for Best Romance 🏆
Book Lovers – 2022 Goodreads Choice Award Winner for Best Romance 🏆
NOMINATIONS:
Beach Read: Goodreads Choice Award nominee for Best Romance (2020)
how are emily henry books connected?
Even though all of her books are standalones, there are fun little easter eggs hidden in each novel. See below for all of them.
FREEMAN’S BOOKSTORE
Book Lovers: Nora, Libby and their mother live upstairs the bookstore + Charlie professes his love for Nora in this West Village bookstore
Happy Place: Wyn worked in the bookstore as a part-time job and then later Wyn and Harriet move into the apartment upstairs the bookstore (which was initially Nora, Libby and their mother’s apartment)
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
Happy Place: Parth picks up a book by a “married couple who usually publish separately. One of them writes literary doorstop novels and the other writes romance.” Kimmy then blurts out that she knew them because she went to the same university as them before they got together.
The married couple referenced here is January and Gus from Beach Read.
THE NOVEL- CURMUDGEON
Beach Read: this is the novel that January is writing throughout the book
Book Lovers: Charlie was January’s editor for this novel and Nora is seen buying this novel from a bookstore.
SUPPORTING EACH Other:
When Alex from People We Meet On Vacation is sitting by the pool and reading a book, the book he’s reading was written by Gus from Beach Read.
THE LAYOVER EPILOGUE
At the back of the target version of Book Lovers – there’s an extended epilogue titled “Layover” where all 3 couples from Beach Read, People We Meet On Vacation and Book Lovers are stuck in the airport at Christmas time.
January and Gus spot Charlie and Nora kissing as they wait at their gate. Then they head to a restaurant where they encounter Poppy serenading Alex with karaoke.
This epilogue can also be found in the bonus content section of Emily Henry’s website.
THE LOVE THAT SPLIT THE WORLD
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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, 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.
Best Quotes
Love is giving the world away, and being loved is having the whole world to give.
Natalie. I didn’t mean to choose you or anything. I just know if I only get to build one porch in my life, I’d like it to be yours, and if there’s one person I never have to hurt or disappoint, I’d want that to be you too.
There’s nothing scarier than hearing someone you love cry, except imagining a world where that sound stops (Or no longer exists)
No matter how hard it feels, you don’t need to be afraid to move on, and you don’t need to be afraid to stay either. There’s always more to see and feel.
It’s true that nothing has the potential to hurt so much as loving someone, but nothing heals like it either.
Growing up is going to hurt. Only you can decide if the pain is worth the love.
No story is truer than any other story that has the truth in its heart
And sometimes, we don’t talk about things because we don’t want to be comforted. We don’t want anyone to tell us it wasn’t our fault, or that they forgive us, or that we did the best we could. We want to hold on to that pain because we think that’s what we deserve. We worry that if we let it go, we’re dishonoring it.
It’s all going to feel worth it in the end. Every moment you live, every darkness you face, they’ll all feel worth it when you’re staring light in the face.
I sometimes think I wouldn’t feel so lost if she didn’t try so hard to make me feel okay about looking for myself.
But he died,” I protested. “It’s a condition of living,” she said.”
Honey, you’re a smart kid, and you’re sensitive too. That’s not a bad thing, but it is a hard thing. For you, the dark’s going to feel a whole lot darker, and you won’t be able to hide from it. But I want you to listen to me. Listen good. You don’t know everything, not yet you don’t. And when you see those good things-and I promise you, there are so many good things-they’re going to be so much brighter for you than they are for other people.
No matter how hard it feels, you don’t need to be afraid to move on. There’s always more to see and feel.
TROPE: fantasy/magical realism, star crossed lovers/forbidden love
TWs: grief and loss, death of parent, death of 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.
Best Quotes
Letting go is not forgetting. It’s opening your eyes to the good that grew from the bad, the life that blooms from decay.
Grief is an unfillable hole in your body. It should be weightless, but it’s heavy. Should be cold, but it burns. Should, over time, close up, but instead it deepens.
was just a moment, and you made me forever.
We both know that pain comes for us all. It’s almost a relief. Because if all of us are going to someday lose the people we love most, or be lost by them, then what is there to do but live?
I think life is about learning to dance even when you’re sitting still.
I think my favorite parts of life are the things I didn’t know I wanted.
We may just be moments, but to love a handful of people very well, that’s a good life.
Most of the time, when you regret something, you haven’t seen what the thing you regret can lead you to, if you let it.
Moments are like cherries. They’re meant to be relished, shared – not hoarded. You can clutch one terrible Moment or experience all the rest. Your life is slipping past in brilliant little bits, and I know it feels as though you’re holding on to him, as though opening your hand is letting him slip away. But when moments pass and crumble, they become seeds. They grow into new trees. And I promise you, he’ll be in every new leaf. He will never be far from you. But if you don’t let go of all that he did, you’ll be haunted like the rest of them. You will miss the chance to live the life you want because you’ve accepted the one that’s been passed down to you.
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.
Best Quotes
There were still pieces of us we so badly wished each other could see and yet couldn’t make ourselves ask for, and there was anger and resentment and it still all hurt, but right now, we were here, and if we stayed long enough, things might start to heal, even a little bit.
How many billions of things had to happen just right to give me this ordinary life
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.
Best Quotes
That’s what we do for our kids, isn’t it? We hoist the sun up into the sky for them every day until they’re old enough to do it for themselves.
Why did people lie? With their words, with their voices, with their bodies, with their beautiful houses and beautiful clothes and sometimes even their faces? Why couldn’t everyone just be what they were?
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 romance. 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.
Best Quotes
When you love someone,” he said haltingly, “. . . you want to make this world look different for them. To give all the ugly stuff meaning, and amplify the good. That’s what you do.
That’s the key to marriage. You have to keep falling in love with every new version of each other.
Sometimes life is very hard. Sometimes it demands so much of you that you start losing pieces of yourself as you stretch out to give what the world wants to take.
People were complicated. They weren’t math problems; they were collections of feelings and decisions and dumb luck.
Every single person on the planet had to take turns hurting. Sometimes all you could do was hold on to each other right until the dark spat you back out.
Hate, I found out on the ride home, was a less embarrassing way to say fear.
I know feeling small gets to some people, . . . but I kind of like it. Takes the pressure off when you’re just one life of six billion at any given moment. And when you’re going through something hard . . . it’s nice to know you’re not even close to the only one.
My Happily Ever After was a strand of strung-together happy-for-nows, extending.
The only promise you ever had in life was the one moment you were living.
We can never fully know the people we love. When we lose them, there will always be more we could have seen.
sometimes it was okay to let a little ugliness into your story. That it would never rob you of all the beauty.
I’m a complete person, and not just someone else’s mistake.
Her laugh,’ she said finally ‘She snorted when she laughed.’ The corner of my mouth inched up but a new heaviness settled across my chest. ‘I love when people do that,’ I admitted. ‘My best friend does it. I always feel like she’s drowning in life. In a good way. Like it’s rushing up her nose, you know?”
I’d thought missing my dad would be the hardest thing I’d ever do. But the worst thing, the hardest thing, had turned out to be being angry with someone you couldn’t fight it out with.
And that was the moment I realized: when the world felt dark and scary, love could whisk you off to go dancing; laughter could take some of the pain away; beauty could punch holes in your fear. I decided then that my life would be full of all three.
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.
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People We Meet On Vacation (US)
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You And Me On Vacation (UK)
Best Quotes
I love him so much. I love him more than I did yesterday, and I already know tomorrow I’ll love him even more, because every piece of him he gives me is another to fall in love with.
Maybe things can always get better between people who want to do a good job loving each other. Maybe that’s all it takes.
It’s not your job to make me happy, okay? You can’t make anyone happy. I’m happy just because you exist, and that’s as much of my happiness as you have control over.
Purpose matters more than contentment.
There may come a day when I no longer need to be touching you at all times, but that day is not today.
You can’t outrun yourself. Not your history, not your fears, not the parts of yourself you’re worried are wrong.
Being together was as easy and natural as being alone, without any of the loneliness.
I wish I could bottle this moment and wear it as a perfume.
Don’t encourage people to blame you for something beyond your control.
Good morning, beautiful smile. Hello, strong arms and legs. Have a great day, lovely belly that feeds me.
There’s that Poppy, who’s experiencing it all and having the most magical night of her life. And then there’s the one who’s already missing it, who’s watching this all happen from some point in the distance, knowing I can never go back and do it all over again.
I’d do anything for you, but—please don’t ask me to if you’re not sure.
There’s nothing so off-putting to some people as someone who seems not to care whether anyone else approves of them. Maybe it’s resentment: I have bent for the greater good, to follow the rules, so why haven’t you? You should care.
I don’t know how to love someone as much as I love you.
If I can’t love you at Times Square then I don’t deserve you at a used bookstore.
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.
Best Quotes
Is there anything better than iced coffee and a bookstore on a sunny day? I mean, aside from hot coffee and a bookstore on a rainy day.
Maybe love shouldn’t be built on a foundation of compromises, but maybe it can’t exist without them either. Not the kind that forces two people into shapes they don’t fit in, but the kind that loosens their grips, always leaves room to grow. Compromises that say, there will be a you-shaped space in my heart, and if your shape changes, I will adapt. No matter where we go, our love will stretch out to hold us.
That’s the thing about women. There’s no good way to be one. Wear your emotions on your sleeve and you’re hysterical. Keep them tucked away where your boyfriend doesn’t have to tend to them and you’re a heartless bitch.
That’s life. You’re always making decisions, taking paths that lead you away from the rest before you can see where they end. Maybe that’s why we as a species love stories so much. All those chances for do-overs, opportunities to live the lives we’ll never have.
So if you’re the ‘wrong kind of woman,’ then I’m the wrong kind of man.
For anyone who wants it all,” she begins, “may you find something that is more than enough.”
A reminder that there are things in life so valuable that you must risk the pain of losing them for the joy of briefly having them.
Because nothing—not the beautiful and not the terrible—lasts.
All those years spent thinking that I had superhuman self-control, and now I realize I just never put anything I wanted too badly in front of myself.
In my favorite books, it’s never quite the ending I want. There’s always a price to be paid. Mom and Libby liked the love stories where everything turned out perfectly, wrapped in a bow, and I’ve always wondered why I gravitate toward something else. I used to think it was because people like me don’t get those endings. And asking for it, hoping for it, is a way to lose something you’ve never even had. The ones that speak to me are those whose final pages admit there is no going back. That every good thing must end. That every bad thing does too, that everything does.
I’m not ashamed of my upbringing, but the more you tell a person about yourself, the more power you hand over.
Just because not everyone gets you doesn’t mean you’re wrong.
Some books you don’t read so much as live, and finishing one of those always makes me think of ascending from a scuba dive. Like if I surface too fast I might get the bends.
Life in New York was like being in a giant bookstore: all these trillions of paths and possibilities drawing dreamers into the city’s beating heart, saying, I make no promises but I offer many doors.
You let me love you as much as I know I can, for as long as I know I can.
TWs: depression, anxiety, parent with chronic illness
MY RATING: ★★/5
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?
In every universe, it’s you for me. Even if it’s not me for you.
My best friends taught me a new kind of quiet, the peaceful stillness of knowing one another so well you don’t need to fill the space. And a new kind of loud: noise as a celebration, as the overflow of joy at being alive, here, now.
Like even when something beautiful breaks, the making of it still matters.
It’s not selfish to want to be happy.
Want is a kind of thief. It’s a door in your heart, and once you know it’s there, you’ll spend your life longing for whatever’s behind
There doesn’t need to be a winner and a loser. You just have to care how the other person feels. You have to care more about them than you do about being right.
3 Reasons to skip this book
Immature Character Behavior: Even though the characters deal with mature issues like depression, grief, and anxiety, they acted quite immaturely. It did remind me a bit of YA books, which I don’t usually read because of this very reason. Overall, it didn’t feel like I was reading about characters in their 30s with full-blown careers and lives.
Unlikable Protagonist: The extreme people-pleasing tendency of the protagonist, Harriet, was frustrating to read about, and her lack of communication added to the annoyance.
Plot and Pacing Issues: The book’s plot was fueled by miscommunication, which made it a struggle to read through, and the first part of the story felt slow and uneventful. Additionally, the tonal differences between the dual timelines (Harriet and Wyn being together in the past and being broken up now) were a bit jarring.
3 Reasons to read this book
Dynamic Friend Group: I really enjoyed the dynamic between the different friends in the group and how each person’s personality complemented the others.
Discussion of Mental Health: I appreciated the way the book tackled mental health and grief after losing a parent. The portrayal of these issues was well-done and contributed to the emotional depth of the story.
Important Life Lessons: this book’s strengths lie in the lessons towards the end. These include being brave enough to pursue one’s own happiness, the importance of seeking help for mental health issues, and the value of communication and having difficult conversations with loved ones.
Yes! From the time of this post, 3 of her movies have been opted for film adaptations – Beach Read, People We Meet On Vacation and Book Lovers.
Do you need to read Emily Henry books in order?
Nope! They are all standalones and can be read in any order. But if you read them in publication order then you will be able to catch some adorable little easter eggs! 🥚
Are Emily Henry books spicy?
Yes. They are open door so the intimate scenes are explicit and great for lovers who like steamy romances 🔥
Are Emily Henry books connected?
Yes and No. They are all standalones but there are fun easter eggs in each book that connect details between characters, making it feel like they’re all in the same fictional universe.
Which Emily Henry book should I read first?
As they are all standalones, they can be read in any order. So what’s your favourite trope?
If you’re looking for some sci-fi action and magical realism try any of her YA novels. If you like strong female friendship and road trip vibes, try Hello Girls.
What is Emily Henry’s net worth?
Unknown as author advances are not public knowledge.
How many books has Emily Henry written?
8 total books: 4 young adult + 4 adult contemporary romance
Emily Henry’s next book 2024?
“Funny story”, coming out in April 2024 follows a woman named Daphne whose fiancé leaves her for his childhood best friend. In a bemusing twist of fate, Daphne becomes roommates with Miles, who is the aforementioned childhood best friend’s ex-boyfriend. They decide to embark on a harmless little fake-dating scheme, which leads to something more.
