Review: Beach Read by Emily Henry

Beach Read by Emily Henry

on May 2020
Genres: Adult Fiction
Pages: 384
Format: eBook
Source: Publisher
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A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.

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.

Beach Read was exactly what I needed during this difficult time of self quarantine. It is sweet and romantic and a little bit sad. It had me reading way past my bedtime.

I loved January. She is bright and happy and smart and has just gotten some of the shine worn off of her as she comes to the beach house to write her next novel. A novel that she is very far behind on. That’s where she meets August, who is a little grumpy, a realist and maybe a little bit soft in the center. Apart, they are polar opposites but together…

January really had me. I like her humor and her outlook on life. She’s taken a hard hit, but I really enjoyed her POV and especially liked her inner monologue. Enter Augustus who she doesn’t know what to do with. He is the cynical writer and the quiet romantic all in one. I liked how their friendship blossomed into something more. It was natural and very easy to see how they could like the differences in each other.

The secondary plots are interesting and I was very intrigued about January’s father’s story. There’s a lot of cute flirting countered with some really heavy and sad moments and I liked how that book weighed itself so evenly. I seriously stayed up way too late reading it.

The only thing I wish I had more of was the best friend. January’s best friend does eventually come to visit, but I wish I had more outsiders from January and Augustus’s past, making them more complete when seen with others. (There are secondary characters but they’re mostly on August’s side and from the town)

Overall, this book was such a delightful surprise. I will be buying copies for all of my friends!