Beach Read by Emily Henry

|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.

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|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 a favorite that I’ll reread for years.

Beach Read was so different from People We Meet on Vacation and Book Lovers. It felt more melancholy at times and it was hard to explore that relationship between January and her father. It was a beautiful story about how you are always capable of finding the good in the bad. How you can create your own happy ending, whatever that looks like to you. Gus was a broken soul with a heart of gold. I loved how willing he was to work on himself to find his June in January.

I think this is the book I related to least out of the three. That’s probably why it’s my least favorite. Beach Read is a great book that didn’t fall short of the amazing story I’ve come to expect from Henry.