Beach Read

Book reviews

20 May

“And that was the moment I realized: when the world felt dark and scary, love could take some of the pain away; beauty could punch holes in your fear.”

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

1. BEACH READ by Emily Henry

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.

BOOK REVIEW

Beach Read by Emily Henry was exactly everything I never realized I needed in my perfect romances. The book was such a deeply moving (there was a constant ache in my heart) and never failing to both engage and entertain (it’s been a long time since I had this ridiculous smile on my roundy face) read. A well-paced story, which made me see life in a completely different light. Like you’re doing everything you can to survive only to be sabotaged by something beyond your control, maybe even some darker part of yourself... But then, there’s love. I mean, there’s always love. And that’s how the whole thing weirdly but so comfortingly functioned, if you know what I mean…

The author created the love story of the year, accompanied by infectiously snarky banter, which I absolutely fucking adored and loved. Trust me, January in summer is everything you want and nothing more!

“When you love someone,” he said haltingly, “…you want to make this world look different for them. To give all the ugly stuff meaning, and amplify the good. That’s what you do. For your readers. For me. You make beautiful things because you love the world, and maybe the world doesn’t always look how it does in your books, but… I think putting them out there, that changes the world a little bit. And the world can’t afford to lose that.”

January Andrews was a once optimist HEA romance writer, battling her own heart while slogging through a bout of writer’s block after a series of unfortunate events in her rather complicated life. The love story of her parents was what made the heroine keep believing in the powerful feeling. Her mother’s first cancer diagnosis taught her that love was an escape rope, but it was the second diagnosis that taught her love could be a life vest when you were drowning. But then, after the great reveal of the ultimate betrayal of her so deeply loved father, she started to worry that maybe she, like her father, was incapable of the love she’d spent her entire life chasing. But then, miraculously, Gus came into the picture, and life continued…

“You don’t think you ever will again?”
Gus stepped back, shoes crackling against the gravel. “It doesn’t matter if I believe it can work or not,” he said. “Not believing in something doesn’t stop you from wanting it. If you’re not careful.”

Augustus Everett was a successfully published author and January’s forever rival. He was all broody and mysterious, fighting creative demons of his own. And not only the creative ones. I instantly fell in love with his damaged character. Alongside with January, I enjoyed getting to know Gus as the plot progressed. And suddenly, it all made sense: his hesitancy and deflection, the mistrust of people, the fear of commitment, and so on and so forth. And ridiculously enough, it was heartbreakingly beautiful.

“That’s basically us. On fire and just straight-up dropping out of the sky.”

January and Gus together were a force to be reckoned with. The connection between them was one of a kind, while chemistry was undeniably good. The two were so raw and relatable that they managed to chip off a huge chunk of my already torn heart. I lived for their witty exchanges, especially for Gus’s smart musings. It’s actually hard to describe my level of satisfaction with the fictional but so real couple. You need to see it for yourself.

In books, I’d always felt like the Happily Ever After appeared as a new beginning, but for me, it didn’t feel like that. My Happy Ever After was a strand of strung-together happy-for-nows, extending back not just to a year ago, but to thirty years before. Mine had already begun, and so this day was neither an ending nor a beginning.
It was just another good day. A perfect day. A happy-for-now, so vast and deep that I knew—or rather believed—I didn’t have to worry about tomorrow.

Beach Read was just unputdownable and unforgettable. The book had so much depth and substance to it, maintaining a perfect balance between the author’s biting humor and careful approach to some really heavy topics. I really appreciated the lack of cliches, and especially the absence of my most despised trope—miscommunication. Long story short, go fucking grab the book. It was amazing!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emily Henry writes stories about love and family for both teens and adults.

She studied creative writing at Hope College and the now-defunct New York Center for Art & Media Studies and now spends most of her time in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the part of Kentucky just beneath it.

What is your favorite part of this book?
On a broad, technical level, I love the dialogue. Dialogue is far and away the thing I enjoy writing most, and the one piece of the process that comes fairly easily to me. It’s fun to do, which (hopefully) translates to it being fun to read!
On a scene-specific level, I’d choose the Red, White, and Blue Book Club meeting. Again: super fun to write all those characters and their interactions, and I hope readers will love it as much as I do.
What was the hardest plot point or character to write in this book?
It was hard to write January’s anger. Anger’s a feeling I’ve spent a lot of my life avoiding. It’s only recently that I’ve started to internalize that anger isn’t innately bad, or something to be avoided at all costs. To let this character feel her anger was a real challenge, partly because I wanted readers to like and care about her. And I think we tend to be much harder on characters than we would be on people in our real lives, because we’re so often seeing their unfiltered and ugliest thoughts.
Emotional honesty is always important in writing, but especially because of the first-person narration and the fact of this being a love story, there was no way around hearing January’s most embarrassing, vulnerable, silly, cringey, angry, or steamy thoughts. I could’ve left any of those out, but it wouldn’t have felt authentic to me. I wanted her to feel all of her feelings, but I struggled with feeling concerned about how readers would react to some of her emotions and decisions.
My editor, Amanda Bergeron, and I worked hard to find ways to bring January’s anger to life, while also creating space for the reader to understand her on a deeper level — and see who she was before this big life-changing event that’s turned her into a more bitter, pessimistic version of herself.
Write a movie poster tag line for your book.
I can’t claim credit for it, but I love the tagline my publisher came up with: He writes literary fiction. She writes romance. Let the war of words begin.
- Emily Henry