by Emily Henry
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Publication Date: May 19th 2020
Publisher: Berkley
Pages: 361
ISBN: 9781984806734
Genre: Romance, Contemporary, Women's Fiction
Source: Netgalley Review Copy / Own
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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. (Goodreads)
Beach Read by Emily Henry was at the very top of my list of books I wanted to read this summer. I am all about summer books, (even though summer is probably my least favorite season), and I am always on the lookout for new summer-themed books. As soon as I saw the cover for Beach Read, I knew I would have to check it out!
Let me start this by saying that I went into this expecting a cute, romantic, beach read, and that’s… not exactly what this book is. While the book did have a lot of cutesy moments, it definitely had a lot of darker moments as well. (i.e., death, cults, etc.) And while the setting was at the beach, there was not the type of beach reading that I was expecting. This did not put me off of reading the book, but it definitely wasn’t what I had anticipated going into this book, so I just wanted to put that out there for someone else that I may go into the books with similar expectations.
That being said, I did really enjoy this book. January and Gus were adorable, and I enjoyed watching their relationship grow over the course of the book. (Enemies-to-lovers trope here, which happens to be my fave!) Also, there were a lot of fun secondary characters as well. The storyline was interesting, with lots of cutesy moments and steamy romance. (I probably could have done without the cult parts of the book, but I get while they were in there.) And I loved the setting for the book. I am a sucker for books set at the beach. So fun!
Overall; Beach Read was not at all what I expected, but was an interesting read none-the-less. It’s the second book I have read so far by Emily Henry, but I am definitely curious to check out some of her other books soon!