Beach Read by Emily Henry

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.

Paperback, 361 pages

PublishedMay 19, 2020 

by Berkley

3.5/5 stars

I received this book 2 years ago in a Beach Box by the fine folks at Sweet Reads Box, a recent trip to the beach was the perfect place to start this one. This is also my first book by Emily Henry, she has created quite the buzz on Instagram.

Beach Read got off to a great start. I definitely felt the vibe of writers block for both January and Gus. I was intrigued with January’s relationship with her father and how she came to his house. There were some funny laugh out loud moments with a plot that paved the way for some fun adventures. There was a nice mix of bookish and relationship issues to create layers to this story.

But, did you feel that but coming?  While these field trips they took together (in the name of research) worked until they didn’t. I couldn’t grasp the darkest of including a backwoods death cult in the mix. This is rom/com and I get the past hurts both January and Gus had and I would have liked to see that flushed out more - seeing more of Sonja and even January’s mom would have been nice.

Beach Read felt a little longer than necessary,  the writing was nice but I was left wanting a little more besides January and Gus’s relationship.

I have the author's People We Meet on Vacation on my shelf and have even preordered her new book Book Lovers (with a title like that how could I not).

This book was part of my 2022 Reading Off My Shelf Challenge #21