The Book:
Beach Read by Emily Henry, 2020
The Characters:
Augustus Everett, January Andrews
Get it on Amazon.
The Plot (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.
The Ending:
Obviously, they fall in love. They both finish their books and publish them under their own names. January finds letters from her father that allow her to forgive him.
The Review:
I can definitely understand the hype behind this book. Beach Read is a sweet romance with engaging, funny characters. The author did a great job of capturing how awkward one can be around a former crush.
I loved the banter between January and Augustus, and how they both convinced the other to open up to new ideas. Their chemistry was extremely well-written!
This book wasn’t entirely light-hearted: January has some complicated family issues to deal with throughout the book. I enjoyed how this gave some depth to the book beyond the love story.
Overall, this was the perfect summer read, just as the title advertises.
Read this if you liked:
- The Switch by Beth O’Leary
- How to Walk Away by Katherine Center
- The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell
This was a Book of the Month pick last month. Haven’t checked out Book of the Month yet? Use my code for $10 off your first box. (I get a $10 credit too, but that means more reviews for me to share with you!)
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