I just didn’t get the warm fuzzy feelings I had hoped for with this title.Ģ. The evenings and mornings are cold and damp. The rom-com field trips that January takes Gus on are highly overshadowed by Gus’s death cult excursions and their own personal demons.

Yes, it’s hot and sticky during the day but no beach stuff really happens. This book also didn’t feel summery to me. Both characters go through a lot of emotional ups and downs. Gus is also carrying a lot of his own baggage. While struggling with the worst case of writer’s block ever (because what even is love anymore?), she’s living in his home cleaning out his and his mistress’s things and preparing to sell it. January finds out about this mistress (whom he was spending time with while his wife, and January’s mom, was at home going through chemotherapy) at her father’s funeral, when said mistress hands her a key, a note, and a teary smile.

The beach house is the house he owned with his mistress. We learn immediately that January is reeling from the death of her secret-keeping father. I was expecting a light, fluffy storyline with two authors throwing their witty banter back and forth, all while the summer sun blazes down on them as the waves crash against the shore outside their beach houses. The first thing I think of when I think about Beach Read is that it’s a lot heavier than I expected. While this was a fun book, unfortunately it wasn’t as fun and swoony as I had hoped. Who doesn’t love a good beach read? This cute summery cover, the fun title, and the unique synopsis had me reaching for some fun, swoony romantic comedy in the sun. Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. 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).

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. 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. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. 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.Īugustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction.

Beach reads emily henry