Stephanie Sullivan: Review

TITLE: Funny Story

RATING: ★★★★

RELEASE DATE: April 23rd, 2024

Summary (from Goodreads): A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common.

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?

REVIEW: This was a good story, and I enjoyed the main characters, Daphne and Miles. They are both emotionally screwed up in different ways, but they manage to "find" themselves when they get together. The plot was well developed, and there were aspects of Daphne's character that I could identify with. I laughed. I teared up. I sighed. It had all the elements of a good love story. The only gripe I have, and I believe I said this in my review of Happy Place also, is that the author really should write her 30-something-year-old characters acting more like grown ups. If they were in their late teens to early 20's I could probably understand the pot smoking and whatnot, but it's very hard to relate to characters in their mid to late-30's who smoke weed and act like 20-something wannabes. Overall, I would still recommend Funny Story, but unfortunately I won't be anxiously awaiting the author's next book and pouncing on it, like I usually do.

(DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this title from NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.)