Recent Reads: Beach Read by Emily Henry

Beach Read by Emily Henry
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date:  May 19, 2020 

 

Format: Paperback
Source: Bought/Own

Rating:


Goodreads 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.

Trigger warnings: Alcohol abuse, Cancer (past), Death of Parents, Cheating (past),  Child abuse and neglect (past), Suicide Cult and Fire, and a lot of Depression and grief.

Review: 

I picked up Beach Read since I had been seeing it everywhere and I really enjoyed People You Meet on Vacation by the same author. This is a contemporary, hate to love romance with a medium spice level. And while dubbed a "beach read" by the title this book would be a good anywhere read. I did take it to the beach and enjoyed it, but it was not super beach setting focused, which surprised me a little. 

January is a romance writer that has her world rattled when her dad passes away and what she knows of happily ever after changes. Along with her perceptions completely changing, she is suffering from some depression and grief over her father, and she has inherited a home from him that she needs to clean out that is causing more strife. To make matters worse her college rival, Augustus, is living next door. Luckily for them both, they are struggling to write their next books, and both make a deal to write the other's genre for a while. In doing so they spend more time together and hate becomes love slowly. 

This book while cute and romantic, was also a bit dark. It begins with cheating and death and then there is a lot of internal struggles throughout the book as January comes to terms with her father’s secret life and learns more about Gus' childhood and life. The characters where flawed and that is always refreshing in a romance. I want them to be real and these characters seemed like they could be real. While I really enjoyed the characters, the book was a little slow. The midway point was lagging for me but then eventually picked up again, but it could discourage readers. 

This was a great romance though, if you are looking for a contemporary romance where the love interests have to heal, sometimes together, that is what Emily Henry seems to write, and this was a wonderful book focusing on healing as well as love.