Emily Henry’s written 6 rom-coms in 5 years. Here’s the genre she would love to revisit

Author Emily Henry’s career can perhaps best be described as a writer’s dream.

The 34-year-old has published 10 books since 2017, sold more than 9 million copies in the U.S., and secured a four-book deal in 2022 after her book “Beach Read” became a New York Times bestseller in the early months of the pandemic. After the release of her newest book, “Great Big Beautiful Life,” on April 22, 2025, she has one more book to deliver on that deal (although she tells us it will not be her last).

Five of her books are in the process of being adapted to film or TV series. The one she says is nearest completion is “People We Meet On Vacation,” which is expected to be released on Netflix with Emily Bader and Tom Blyth playing the leads. 

So when TODAY.com caught up with Henry days before her newest book was released, we led with one question: How are you holding up?

“I’ve never had an interview open with that question!” she says with a laugh. “It is intense, this has been kind of a breakneck pace for me.”

Just the last few months alone have been an exciting time for Henry. As she was gearing up to release “Great Big Beautiful Life,” early screeners for “People We Meet On Vacation” were viewed by select audiences, and the response so far, she tells TODAY.com, has been a “relief.”

“It is definitely a lot but I’m riding the high in the adrenaline of all of it,” she says. “It’s been a really, really beautiful whirlwind.”

Read on for TODAY.com’s conversation with the bestselling author.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

This is your sixth book in five years. How much of the process of writing books, talking to press and handling screen adaptations is starting to feel normal?

It’s really weird. On some days, it feels totally normal and mundane almost, and then it will hit me. I don’t think it will ever feel totally normal. I think I was set up to understand how bizarre and uncommon and miraculous all of this is and I try to appreciate it at every turn. It definitely stays feeling a bit surreal at all times, but that’s probably a good thing.

Your focus has been heavily set in the romance genre over the last five years. Once you finish your current book deal, are you itching to write a different kind of book?

I think “Great Big Beautiful Life” was sort of a sidestep where I got to have a romantic-comedy plotline but also do something a little bit different. I will write some more straightforward romantic comedies in the coming years, but I also really enjoyed getting to do something different and I’m excited to see what else is out there that would be fun to work on. At some point, I would love to revisit writing thrillers, but I am always going to love a love story.

Your friend Abby Jimenez released a new book not too long ago, and she shared that she writes her books on her cellphone, which I could not fathom. Do you have a certain environment you typically use to write?

I’m a laptop and couch person. I love that Abby does that. I’m just a mess with my phone, so if I were writing fully on my phone, that would take five times as long as it would on a computer.

But I will say, a lot of times, my favorite scenes are things that I first do have to write down on my phone because they happen when I’m out on the go. Sometimes you’re in a waiting room and something occurs to you, or you’re lying down at night and trying to go to sleep and then I have an idea for a scene or a bit of dialogue. I have to pull out my notes app and transcribe as well as I can with one eye shut. So there is something really freeing about being untethered from your computer.

I want to transition a bit into the screen adaptations that are happening. I saw some screeners of “People We Meet on Vacation” were held and many audience members said the public is not ready for how good it is. Did you see the responses?

Oh my gosh, that makes me so happy. I didn’t see a ton because I do not Google anything with “Emily Henry” in it. But I do get tagged and saw some really excited readers who got to see an early cut of the movie. It thrilled me and relieved me.

When I saw the cut, I felt pretty sure that the readers were going to be totally in love with it. But it’s definitely still a relief and really exciting to see what has been the case so far.

How has it felt handing your stories over to take on a new life on the screen?

It’s the full spectrum of human emotion to go through this process. It truly is a miracle that anything gets made, and it’s especially a miracle when something good gets made because there are so many obstacles. The big thing for me is wanting the adaptations to be something that the readers would be excited about but that also can stand alone as movies. That’s what everybody wants, and I do believe that they’ve managed to pull that off.

Fellow writer Colleen Hoover’s book “It Ends With Us” was released as a movie last summer, and obviously that film continues to make headlines. Has that impacted how you feel about your books being adapted?

I don’t think it has because from the beginning, I have understood that adaptations are going to be polarizing and people are going to have intense feelings and opinions.

I think readers don’t fully understand the scope of what an author can and cannot do with an adaptation. I have used every moment that I have been invited to the table, so to speak, to advocate for what I think the readers will care most about. Beyond that, I am well aware that there’s not so much that I can do. I think there’s a misconception that writers are out there casting their own movies and making big calls and that’s simply not the case. We are one of many, many, many voices in any room that we’re in when it comes to adaptations. All we can do is advocate for the readers and hope it works out.

You spoke in a 2023 interview with TODAY.com about your experience getting into romance books as both a reader and a writer. Now you play such a role in the genre. What do you think some people misunderstand about it?

I think there’s still a sense that these books are only for women, and that’s not true. I do think that’s still a large percentage of who the readership is, but these books are just books, they’re just stories. They’re meant for anyone who needs them and anyone who should feel welcome to pick them up and give them a try.

I think they’re really, really important cornerstones of fiction. I think love stories are always going to matter, because to most of us, love really matters.

We’ve seen romance-only bookshops popping up all over the country in recent years, from New York City to Denver to LA. What role do you think romance novels play for people at this period in time?

I do think right now we are seeing a huge boom because the world does feel so unpredictable and chaotic and scary. “Beach Read” came out at the start of the pandemic and I really think that part of the reason that book took off in the way it did was because we were all housebound and lonely and isolated. And even though the pandemic is now over, I think that some of those feelings of isolation have hung around and I think we’re all looking for connection and hope and I think romance offers those two things in spades.

The purpose of a happily ever after, to me, is to present the idea of hope and to present the idea that even though the world can be chaotic and scary and unpredictable, there are these things in our lives that make all of it worth it or manageable on some level, and that is love.