Beach Read

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Author: Emily Henry

Published: May 19, 2020

ISBN: 1984806734

Goodreads Rating: 4.17/5

For fans of: Romance, enemies to lovers trope, books about writing and reading, books about grief and mental health

Disclaimer: I was not paid for this review, and all opinions are my own. If you are interested in purchasing this book, please consider using my Amazon affiliate link (by clicking on the top or bottom pictures) and helping a fellow book blogger out 🙂 I will receive a small fee from Amazon, but your book will still cost the same.

Synopsis from Goodreads:

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.

My Review:

Let me start by saying that I really loved this book, but this cover and the synopsis were a bit deceiving. I liked the beach setting, but these two went to the beach maybe once in the whole book, and they went more when the lake was completely frozen than when it was nice out. With that said, this book was amazing, and a lot heavier than I expected. It dealt with grief, depression, suicide cults, identity crisis, and terminal illness, just to name a few of the topics.

The romance between January and Augustus was the slow-burn enemies to lovers type that I absolutely adore. But it was not a light romance in the slightest. These two really worked on their respective personal issues, as well as worked on all the problems they ever had with each other. They took their time throughout the story to work on their mental health and talked about what they wanted out of life.

I enjoyed that this book was about writing and the characters were also big readers. They talk about getting over writer’s block, and January and Augustus go into the details of their writing process. They also take us on their interviews, and trips to places that inspire their stories. January also talks about the events in her life that made her into a reader, which I always find interesting to read about out. I highly recommend this book to all Romance fans.