Emily Henry writes stories about love and family for both teens and adults. She's the author of The Love That Split the World, A Million Junes, When the Sky Fell on Splendor, and Hello Girls (with Brittany Cavallaro). She studied creative writing at Hope College and the New York Center for Art and Media Studies. She now spends most of her time in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the part of Kentucky just beneath it. You can find her on Instagram @EmilyHenryWrites.
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. Then 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.
January is exactly the kind of sharp, sympathetic, whole-but-hurting protagonist I could have hoped for. When we open the book, she seems to have her tongue in her cheek a bit -- she's not expecting anything to work for her, since everything just came crashing down, and she has no clue how to exist in this new world around her. Often, she describes herself in this kind of limbo -- there was the January before her father's funeral, and there's the January after, though she's not exactly sure how those two Januarys are the same person, much less how they're her. Throw in the fact that this family disaster is also affecting her career, and we have a protagonist we're rooting for, a mystery we're dying to figure out, and the perfect ending we know she deserves. January is instantly lovable, and instantly relatable. Even if you're not a writer, even if you come from a "perfect" family, her inherent struggle to reconcile a whole new worldview is compelling and quite on-the-nose in the world we're living in. I enjoyed how this story was a love story for many things: how to fall in love with someone once your beliefs about love have been shattered; how to fall in love and write again after so many months of inactivity; and how to fall in love with yourself, when everything around you changes and you feel like a whole new person. I feel like, no matter how old you are, you will be able to relate to January in some way.
My favorite part of this book was the whole enemies-to-lovers, anti-romance, (brief) love triangle, stuck-together "romance trope" nature of the romance between January and Gus. The blending of all these tropes was perfectly well-balanced. While these tropes were very easily pulled out of the plot, some of the twists and turns gave each trope new meaning. It's hard to elaborate without exactly spoiling parts of the plot, but truly Henry gave these tropes "a breath of fresh air" (as Josie Silver puts it), meaning that the whole novel was fresh, organic, new, and welcomed. Gus was not the "perfect" romantic partner I thought he was going to be, which made the uncovering of his character fun, and thus the romance exciting. Because we were already cheering for January, and Gus was the natural choice from the beginning, it was thrilling to watch them come together. Gus isn't perfect, and that's exactly what made him the best match for January, even if she didn't figure that out at first, and vice versa. In a way, the journey that Gus and January took together (to get together) and separately (to finish their books) was more satisfying than any one ending Henry could have chosen for them -- the journey, after all, matters more than the destination, and for this romance, that rings loud and true.
I know this sounds absolutely cheesy, but this was, by far, one of the best beach reads I've had this summer. I actually read the book on a beach, which made it much easier for me to fall into the summer rhythm of this book. That being said, for those who wouldn't have been able to read this book on a beach, Henry writes in such a way that it's easy to fall into the story. The writing is engaging, in a way that makes it so easy to be sucked into the multifaceted story -- I read most of this book in the middle of the night because I just couldn't put it down. This may also be a product of the genre, but the stakes were higher -- January had to publish a book soon (a big thing!), or else she'd be literally broke (another big thing!). Those stakes made January's and Gus's witticisms sharper, and also deeper, than what they were actually saying. I also enjoyed how none of the threads in the story were lost -- there was just enough going on (cult activity, writing, January's best friend, understanding her family, etc.) to where one could get a bit sidetracked by what was happening currently in the story, but never fully lost within the plot. Everything was so well-balanced, which made for such a fun, engaging, and entertaining read, no matter where you read it.
Sometimes when people write about writing, it feels meta, and it's almost always cringe-y. That is 100% not the case with Beach Read, if you were worried. I learned in high school to not write about writing, or about having writer's block, because it doesn't make for a very engaging read. In high school, that probably would have been true, but Henry just changed my mind having read about January and her struggles. In a note at the end of the book, Henry explains her thought process on having arrived at writing about writer's block, especially when one really does want to write. She explains all the questions she asked about her writer's block, and how that in turn created January's struggles and triumphs throughout the book. January's struggles with writing and writer's block were made more relatable because Henry described that these were the things she was going through. It never felt meta at all -- as in, the characters didn't deep dive and describe how writing made them feel for twenty pages. It felt real and exploratory, in how writer's block affects a writer, and how a writer can attack writer's block, while also dealing with family, romantic, and other career struggles. Henry humanized the writing experience for me -- often, writers write about characters who don't write, but who are doctors or politicians or lawyers, or aspiring to any of those things. Writers don't write about writers, and it was truly eye-opening to me the way Henry depicted a writer's lifestyle. We get to see how writers work, and as an aspiring writer, it is fascinating, and makes this story more than just falling in love with someone. To me, it feels like falling in love with life again, so that you can write again.
While I haven't seen what Henry's plans are in the near future concerning another book, I will definitely be on the lookout for it!
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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