Beach Read

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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.

Source: advance e-galley provided in exchange for an honest review

I was expecting a whimsical enemies-to-lovers rom-com but Beach Read turned out to be a multi-layered story with interesting subplots, too.

January's loss after her father's death is compounded by a family secret that comes to light. Unable to accept it or face her mother, she escapes to her father's beach house only to find that her nemesis from college, Gus Everett lives next door. Gus is also a successful novelist and they're both coincidentally suffering from writer's block. In an unusual move, they agree to call a truce and help each other overcome their writing slump by learning about the other's preferred genre. As they become closer, they start to open up and face the many truths they've been fighting so hard to avoid.

I enjoyed this novel immensely. There was humour, heartbreak, forgiveness and redemption. I thought it was slightly slow burn and I liked the pace at which January and Gus' friendship evolved into something deeper. I admired how their love scenes were written as well. They were sensual and it did feel like their vulnerabilities were on full display, that those emotionally intimate moments truly meant something more than just physical. Reading about how they worked to come out of their writer's block was also fascinating. I think where Beach Read triumphs is with their respective story arcs. They'd been contending with extremely personal and sensitive matters, some of which had affected their psyches so deeply. They just needed to be with the right person in whom they could trust, who would stand by them through their emotional journeys. Henry succeeded in not only how she approached them but in making me care equally about January and Gus. 

Beach Read was smart and delightful even during the harder moments but everything about it felt so authentic. It will be added to my re-read pile, for sure!

~ Bel