Shelf Life Chronicles

Title: Beach Read
Author: Emily Henry
Release Date: May 19, 2020
Genre: Romance
Rating: ★★★★★

Synopsis

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.

Review

I don’t think I need to give this book a full 5 star review like I have for Henry’s other books. I was saving this one for a rainy day and it didn’t disappoint. It’s my least favorite of the three out so far, but still a favorite that I’ll reread for years so that’s not saying much.

It was a beautiful story about how you are always capable of finding the good in the bad and creating your own happy ending, whatever that looks like to you. Gus was a broken soul with a heart of gold willing to work on himself to find his June in January. I’m glad I was able to be apart of his journey.