Review: Beach Read by Emily Henry

Beach Read by Emily Henry

Publication date: May 19th, 2020

Pages: 400

Spice: 🌶️🌶️

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.

Available at:

Review:

January Andrews's life has been rocked with the death of her father. It turns out the man who had loved her mother so unconditionally through two brushes with cancer had cheated on her. The evidence of his infidelity was standing there at his funeral clutching a key to a beach house and a letter from her father. January put off going to the beach house her father had left her until she had no other choice. Her work being spun like a top caused her perfect life to crumble down around her. Her fiance couldn't love the woman she had become and her skills as a romance writer were called into question. She couldn't seem to find the motivation to write a stitch of romance without it feeling false. She had thought that her parents were the goal to live for and she had written her romances with them in mind, but now she had to wonder if love even existed. Add to that her archnemesis, and fellow author, living right next door to her father's beach house and she is ready to rip her hair out. But it seems Gus is also having trouble with writer's block. So a wager is made. They write a book in each other's styles and see who can get their book published first. The two are driven together for research purposes and as motivators for each other until the spark of hatred starts to turn into a spark of something completely different. Can January let herself believe in love again or did her cynical nemesis have it right, is love not true to reality?

January was a delightful character. I could feel every emotion she felt and the witty comments she threw back at Gus whenever she got the chance, that is exactly what I would do in similar situations. I found her to be smart, kind, selfless, and wounded in a way that made her question how good a person she was but to an outside observer, she was still amazing. I loved that she was quick to move past her animosity of Gus and open herself up to a friendship developing even when he was still a little closed-off. She was the type that loves with her entire heart and I resonated with her. Gus was written really well also but I felt a keen connection to January from start to end.

The cover really sets you up to be surprised for what is between the pages of the book. The cover is light and cartoony to the point where you feel like the book is going to just be a fluff piece. But there are thorns on this rose and they will make your heart bleed. Appearances can be deceiving which is kind of the entire premise of the book. January was seen as this fairy princess who believed life was nothing but sunshine and rainbows while Gus was seen as the stoic asshole who write about pain and misery because he was a miserable person. It was only when you dug deeper that you saw the two people were much different. Gus had a heard and, yes, he was filled with pain but there was also a hope that was flickering within him to understand his world around him. January may have believed her life to be perfect but she started to see the cracks and started to realize even sunshine can be blotted out with dark clouds.

I am usually very stingy with my 5-star ratings. It has to be a book that I would grab off a shelf and tell someone "you have to read this" in order for me to feel it is deserving of such high praise. But I have read my first book by Tessa Bailey and it was a 5-star read. And now my first book of Emily Henry's also earns 5-stars. I will be reading a lot more of their books and look forward to seeing if these 5-star authors maintain their streak.