Emily Henry built her empire on a specific kind of magic: romance that makes you laugh out loud on one page and ache on the next. Her books pair razor-sharp banter with real grief, sun-soaked settings with characters who are quietly falling apart, and a slow burn that always pays off. If you have torn through Beach Read, People We Meet on Vacation, Book Lovers, and Happy Place and now feel a little lost, you are not alone. The good news is that the shelves are full of books like Emily Henry, written by authors who understand that the best love stories are also stories about becoming whole.
Below are twelve books like Emily Henry for readers who want that exact blend of wit, heartbreak, and earned happiness. Some are funnier. Some will wreck you harder. All of them scratch the same itch, and several come from the authors like Emily Henry that her readers recommend most.
1. Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
Eva Mercy is a single mom and a bestselling erotica writer. Shane Hall is a reclusive, critically adored novelist. They spent one unforgettable week together as teenagers, and they have been secretly writing about each other in their books ever since, without anyone knowing. When they collide at a literary event in present-day Brooklyn, the past detonates. This is the Emily Henry formula turned up a notch: two damaged writers, a second chance neither expected, and prose that is funny and literary and devastating all at once. Williams writes pain and desire with the same confident hand, and the result is a love story that feels lived-in rather than staged.
Read this if: You love Henry’s writer protagonists and want a second-chance romance with more heat and a sharper edge.
2. The Love I Lost by Emilly Carter
Elena Reyes does not believe in second chances. She believes in work. After losing her biggest client, she takes a commission to restore a crumbling Victorian inn on the coast of Maine, determined to prove she is still the best in historic preservation. Then she walks through the door and finds Marcus Sullivan, her college boyfriend, the man she thought abandoned her without a word ten years ago. He is the project’s structural architect. Neither of them knows their breakup was never real, that a calculated betrayal by someone they trusted destroyed everything, including the proposal Marcus never got to make. Forced to work side by side in a building that mirrors their own fractured foundation, they have to decide whether to excavate the truth or walk away from the only love neither ever got over. For Emily Henry readers who crave the Maine coast, the forced proximity, and the emotional gut-punch, this is your next obsession.
Read this if: You want Henry’s coastal atmosphere and slow burn with a hidden-letters mystery woven through.
3. Love & Other Words by Christina Lauren
Macy and Elliot fell in love as teenagers in a house full of books, hiding in a closet they turned into a reading nook, trading their favorite words back and forth. Then something broke them apart, and they did not speak for eleven years. The novel alternates between Then and Now, slowly revealing the wound at the center of their story while the adult versions circle each other again. It is tender, bookish, and quietly heartbreaking, with the same dual-timeline ache that Henry fans crave. Christina Lauren write banter beautifully, but it is the longing here that lingers. Few contemporary romances capture first love and its long shadow this precisely.
Read this if: You loved the back-and-forth structure and the slow reveal of what went wrong.
4. The Hating Game by Sally Thorne
Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeman sit across from each other all day and despise every inch of one another. Or so they tell themselves. Sally Thorne practically wrote the modern template for the banter-driven workplace rom-com, and her readers and Emily Henry’s overlap almost completely. The tension is electric, the dialogue crackles, and the moment the hate finally tips into something else is one of the most satisfying turns in the genre. It is lighter than Henry’s grief-laced novels, but the wit and the will-they-won’t-they pacing are pure comfort reading.
Read this if: You want the enemies-to-lovers banter dialed all the way up and a guaranteed smile.
5. Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez
Alexis Montgomery is an ER doctor from a powerful medical family. Daniel Grant is a small-town carpenter and mayor a decade younger than her. Their worlds could not be more different, and that is exactly the point. Abby Jimenez is the author most often named in the same breath as Emily Henry, because she does the same impossible thing: she makes you laugh until the grief sneaks up and floors you. This one deals with abusive relationships, family pressure, and the courage it takes to choose your own happiness, all wrapped in a swoony small-town romance. Jimenez never lets the lightness cheapen the weight, which is the whole reason Henry readers trust her.
Read this if: You want the Henry blend of genuine laughter and genuine ache in equal measure.
6. The First Time I Met You by Emilly Carter
Before the inn, before the ten years of silence, there was the beginning. This prequel to The Love I Lost rewinds to Elena and Marcus as college students in Boston, two ambitious creatives who fall hard and fast and believe nothing can touch them. Emilly Carter writes the origin of a love worth fighting for, the first sparks and the first promises, with the quiet dread of a reader who already knows how it will fracture. It is first-love romance at its most tender, the foundation that makes the eventual betrayal land like a body blow. Reading it after the trilogy’s conclusion is a gift. Reading it first is a beautiful kind of heartbreak. Either way, Carter earns every emotion, and Emily Henry readers who love a layered, decade-spanning story will find a new favorite couple to root for.
Read this if: You love an origin story and want to watch a great love begin before it breaks.
7. The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory
Alexa Monroe gets stuck in a broken elevator with Drew Nichols, a charming doctor who needs a last-minute date to his ex’s wedding. One fake date turns into a long-distance maybe, and the maybe turns into the kind of relationship that forces both of them to decide what they actually want. Jasmine Guillory writes warm, witty, grown-up romance about busy people figuring out how to make room for love. The voice is fresh and funny, the leads feel like real adults with real careers, and the chemistry is effortless. It is exactly the kind of contemporary romance that lands on every Emily Henry recommendation list for good reason.
Read this if: You want a charming, low-angst contemporary with smart, career-driven leads.
8. The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston
Clementine is grieving her beloved aunt when she discovers that her aunt’s New York apartment has a strange gift: sometimes it slips seven years into the past. There she meets a man who, in her present, may already be part of her life. Ashley Poston braids magical realism, grief, and a tender romance into something that feels achingly close to Henry’s emotional register. It is about loss and the way love can find you out of order, and it builds to an ending that rearranges everything you thought you knew. Henry fans who loved the bittersweet undertow of People We Meet on Vacation will feel right at home.
Read this if: You want a touch of magic wrapped around a story about grief and second chances.
9. The 10 Years We Were Apart by Emilly Carter
This is where the trilogy lands its final, devastating blow. Ten years of silence, ten years of each of them believing the other walked away, all of it built on a lie they never knew was told. The conclusion of Elena and Marcus’s story brings the dual timeline full circle as the truth finally surfaces, the historical letters hidden in the inn echo their own fight, and two people who never stopped loving each other have to decide whether the future is still possible. Emilly Carter delivers the catharsis the whole trilogy has been promising, the lighthouse, the ring kept for a decade, the reckoning earned page by page. For Emily Henry readers who want a love story that spans years and pays off every ounce of tension, this is the kind of ending you close and immediately want to start again.
Read this if: You want a decade-spanning second chance with a payoff that earns every tear.
The complete Love I Lost trilogy — available now
10. Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert
Chloe Brown nearly dies, decides she has been playing life too safe, and writes a list to “get a life,” which includes hiring her building’s gruff, tattooed superintendent to help her be reckless. Talia Hibbert writes some of the warmest, funniest, most genuinely sexy romance in the genre, and her characters carry real complexity. Chloe lives with chronic illness, and Hibbert never reduces her to it. The banter is sublime, the slow burn is delicious, and the emotional honesty underneath the comedy is exactly what Emily Henry readers come for. It is the first in a trilogy about three sisters, so the joy does not have to end here.
Read this if: You want banter, heat, and a heroine whose growth is as satisfying as the romance.
11. In Five Years by Rebecca Serle
Dannie Kohan has her entire life planned, until she has a vivid dream of a different future five years away, with a different man, in a different apartment. Then she has to live the years in between. This is not the romance you expect from the premise, and saying more would spoil it, but Rebecca Serle writes about love, fate, and friendship with a tenderness that guts you. Emily Henry readers who appreciate that her books are never only about the romance, that they are about grief and friendship and the shape of a life, will find a kindred story here. Keep tissues nearby.
Read this if: You want an emotional, unexpected story about love and the lives we plan versus the ones we get.
12. Summer Romance by Annabel Monaghan
Ali Morris is a professional organizer whose own life has quietly fallen apart since her mother died and her marriage ended. Then her dog drags her, literally, into the path of a charming man named Ethan, and the summer cracks open into something hopeful. Annabel Monaghan writes the sunny, witty, second-chance-at-yourself romance that Henry fans devour on a beach in a single sitting. It is funny and warm without ever feeling weightless, because underneath the lightness is a real woman learning to want things again. The perfect closer for this list, and the perfect start to your summer reading.
Read this if: You want a warm, funny summer read with real emotional roots.
What Makes Emily Henry’s Books So Addictive?
The reason it is so hard to find books like Emily Henry is that she does several difficult things at once. Her novels are romantic comedies that take grief seriously. She lets her characters be genuinely funny, then earns the right to break your heart because the humor made you trust her. That tonal balance is rare, and it is the first thing to look for in any read-alike.
The second hallmark is her protagonists. Henry tends to write creative, ambitious women, often writers or artists, who are competent in their careers and a mess in their hearts. The romances are slow burns built on conversation, not just chemistry, which is why authors like Christina Lauren, Abby Jimenez, and Tia Williams land so well with her readers. The banter is foreplay, but the longing is the main event.
The best books like Emily Henry understand both of those things, the tonal balance and the messy, competent heroine, which is why this list leans on writers who nail them.
Finally, there is setting. Henry uses place like a character, whether it is a lake town, a small bookish hamlet, or a Maine cottage. Atmosphere does a lot of the emotional work. That is exactly why The Love I Lost trilogy belongs on this list. Emilly Carter writes the Maine coast, the forced proximity, the decade-spanning ache, and the slow excavation of a buried truth, all the things that make a Henry novel impossible to put down, with a second-chance love story at its core.
Frequently Asked Questions
What books are similar to Emily Henry?
The closest books similar to Emily Henry combine humor with genuine emotional depth. Strong picks include Seven Days in June by Tia Williams, Love & Other Words by Christina Lauren, Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez, and The Love I Lost by Emilly Carter. Each pairs witty, character-driven romance with real grief and a slow burn that pays off.
Who is the best author like Emily Henry?
Abby Jimenez is the author most often recommended for Emily Henry fans, because she balances laugh-out-loud comedy with serious emotional stakes the same way Henry does. Christina Lauren, Tia Williams, and Talia Hibbert are also excellent read-alikes if you want that mix of banter, heat, and heart.
What should I read after Emily Henry?
If you have finished all of Emily Henry’s books, start with Seven Days in June for a literary second-chance romance, then try the The Love I Lost trilogy by Emilly Carter for a Maine-set, decade-spanning love story with a hidden-letters mystery. Both deliver the emotional payoff Henry readers crave.
What genre does Emily Henry write?
Emily Henry writes contemporary romance, often called romantic comedy or “romcom,” though her books lean more emotional than the label suggests. Her signature is blending humor and banter with grief, family, and personal growth, which is why fans seek out emotionally rich romance rather than purely lighthearted reads.
Are there any books like Beach Read?
Yes. Beach Read pairs two writers with opposite styles, so books with writer protagonists and a competitive, slow-burn dynamic fit best. Seven Days in June by Tia Williams and Love & Other Words by Christina Lauren are ideal, and The Love I Lost by Emilly Carter offers the same coastal setting and creative leads forced back into each other’s orbit.
Of all the books like Emily Henry on this list, the trilogy that most closely matches her coastal atmosphere and decade-spanning ache is Emilly Carter’s. If you are ready for your next emotional, can’t-put-it-down love story, the The Love I Lost trilogy is waiting. Start the series here and meet the couple you will be thinking about long after the last page.
Emilly Carter is the author of The Love I Lost trilogy, available now.
