Beach Read by Emily Henry
Genre: NA Realistic Fiction
Blurb (on back of book): 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.
MY OPINION: ****
I loved this book. I was debating between rating it four- or five-stars and ultimately decided on the middle 4.5. I was not expecting to enjoy this book as much as I did. I heard many good things about it from various sources but it's not the type of book I typically read, especially the characters are much older than the characters I usually read about.
The premise of this book was so fun. January is a published author who has been struggling with writing her next book after learning some shocking things about her father after his death that changes her entire perspective on him and her family. To deal with her writer's block and her agent's pressure on her to finish her next book, she packs everything up and moves to her father's beach house for the summer in the hopes of finding more inspiration.
When she arrives, she is soon greeted by a ghost from the past: her new neighbor is none other than Augustus Everett, her college nemesis and fellow published author. Back in college, they had a drunken fling at a party for a night but otherwise competed for everything; Gus seemed to loath everything January wrote or did.
Gus and January are writers of two completely different genres (Gus, a literary fiction writer, and January, a romance with happily-ever-afters writer) and both don't seem to understand the other one's world; Gus especially seems to look upon romance novels and the beloved HEA with contempt. However, in an effort to bypass their writer's block, they decide to create a deal to each write a book within each other's genre; whoever finishes first gets the bragging rights and a quote on the cover from the other person. To learn more about each other's genre, January will take Gus on rom-com-worthy dates and romps, while Gus will take her on interviews with cult members (and other dark-serious "dates").
I loved this premise. It's so cute and unique and I especially loved the little fake-dates that January took Gus on. I also LOVED the slow-burn aspect within this book; we all knew they would soon end up together but Emily Henry definitely knew how to build up the tension and anticipation to make that final culminating moment of their relationship all the sweeter.
I would like to say that I was expecting a light, fun, summer-read, but this book ended up being a lot more serious than I thought. Both Gus and January have things from their pasts that have affected them and changed them into the people they were in the present, and their backstories definitely added more layers to the plot and their characters that I was not expecting. However, I loved how intricately it was woven into the book rather than just flat-out saying, Gus has problems, January has problems, thus everyone has problems.
I also really loved the side characters in this book. While I can't remember their names at the moment (I finished this book nine days ago), Gus's aunt and the book club were all so fun and definitely added a quirky element to the book that I loved.
I would like to say that the romance is not the main point of this book. I have grown quite accustomed to reading romance-driven novels, especially over this summer, but this book definitely focused on January and Gus as individuals more than them as a couple. I found it quite refreshing, if unexpected, and I did end up loving the way that they seemed to come together as two quite-different people who were still more similar than anyone could have thought.
Overall, I would recommend this book to readers looking for an interesting, beautifully-written novel that has elements of both Gus and January's styles of writing!
Main Character: Gus, January
Sidekick(s): Family, friends, etc
Villain(s): Misunderstandings, cheating, lying, divorce, etc
Realistic Fiction Elements: This book was all very real to life.
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