Emily Henry

Emily Henry was born in 1991, went to high school in Liberty Township, Ohio, and studied at Hope College on a creative writing scholarship; she lives and writes in Cincinnati. She started in young adult fiction with The Love That Split the World (2016), followed by A Million Junes (2017), When the Sky Fell on Splendor (2019) and Hello Girls (2019), co-written with Brittany Cavallaro.

Her first adult romance, Beach Read (2020), was a wide success, and she has published one a year since: People We Meet on Vacation (2021), Book Lovers (2022), Happy Place (2023), Funny Story (2024) and Great Big Beautiful Life (2025). All six were New York Times bestsellers, and the last five each won the Goodreads Choice Award for best romance. In Beach Read, January Andrews, a romance novelist grieving her father after learning he had an affair, and Gus Everett, her college rival turned literary novelist, bet that each can write a book in the other's genre. Funny Story pairs a librarian, Daphne, with Miles, whose former partners are now dating each other. A film of People We Meet on Vacation was released in January 2026.

Start with Beach Read. It is her first adult novel and shows her mix of banter and grief clearly. Book Lovers makes the best second book. Its heroine, New York literary agent Nora Stephens, has spent her adult life looking after her younger sister, and a month in the small town of Sunshine Falls, North Carolina, puts her up against Charlie Lastra, an editor she already dislikes.

Readers who prefer friends-to-lovers stories should try People We Meet on Vacation instead. Poppy and Alex, best friends and opposites, took a week-long trip together every summer until a falling-out in Dubrovnik left them not speaking for two years, and the book moves between that history and one more trip.