Title: Beach Read
Author: Emily Henry
Publication: May 19, 2020
Publisher: Berkley
Genre: Romance, Women’s Fiction
Pages: 380
SYNOPSIS: (From Goodreads)
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:
A month or two ago my book club picked out another book by this author for our read of the month. I loved it so much that I had to read this book soon. I picked it out as a “me” book between reading books for publishers and authors. I was so excited to read it.
January never thought she would return home to Michigan. Much less return home for something that had to do with her father. She was not happy about it at all. She is under the impression that her father had a secret life that she didn’t know about. What she also was expecting was her college crush, Gus, living next door to her Dad’s vacation home. With everything that has happened with her, a romance author, she has found it very difficult to come up with a happy ending and she has a deadline looming. I totally loved this book. I read from 43% to the end in one night and stayed up until 115 AM reading it. I just couldn’t put it down. I loved the banter that she and Gus had. It made me giggle multiple times. It was certainly a will they won’t they thing going but once they did oh man! It was steamy in a clean way.
I will admit that this book did make me cry at the end. Like ugly cry. I wasn’t expecting that at all. She really grew as a person and realized some things about her parents that she never knew before. Even Gus with the help of January was able to realize his worth as a person. They balanced each other out. The book that January ends up writing is one for the books. It is basically her life story but fictionalized and it is a complete 180 from what she normally writes. The competition that Gus and January have to write their books pushes each other to do something out of their comfort zone. I don’t know what else to say! I just really liked this book. The author has another one coming out and I have added it to my Amazon Wish List. I can’t wait till it comes out!
