Beach Read by Emily Henry on May 25, 2021
Genres: Fiction / Romance / Contemporary, Fiction / Romance / General, Fiction / Romance / Romantic Comedy
Pages: 352
Format: Paperback
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“I’ve never met someone who is so perfectly my favorite person.”
This novel follows January, she is someone who believes in love and its power to transform us. She writes romance and has always looked for her happy ending. But when we see her things aren’t going quite to plan. She is struggling to write, she is grieving her father and yet trying to reconcile herself to the discovery that her father had a secret second life. Upon arriving at his second hideaway home, January is nervous about what she’ll find. Nothing could prepare her for the discovery that her new neighbor is an old college acquaintance, Gus. Like January, Gus is a writer. But we quickly see that, like January, things in his life aren’t quite going to plan. What follows is quite obvious – they slowly form a new bond, breaking down the barriers each had in place and eventually starting a relationship each has secretly dreamed of since they first met.
What I loved most about this book was the exploration of genres, the concept of questioning why a book written by a male is typically classified as fiction and can be read by both men and women whereas a book written by a female is typically classified as women’s fiction and deemed to appeal to women only. The whole bet storyline was hilarious and I really enjoyed the intellectual sparring between the two of them when talking about their books and current writing progress. As for their research days, these certainly provided some interesting topics for discussion as well as some hilarious comedic moments and compromising situations. I loved their witty banter and the interactions between them although I was a little concerned that it might have been leaning towards corny at times but it managed to cleverly avoid going down that road.
I gave this novel a 4.5 star-rating. Everything from the setup to the chemistry and secondary characters is enjoyable beginning to end, and I was rooting so hard for the leads I was practically bouncing up and down. Beach Read has so many of the elements I’d expect of a light summer read, but there’s a glimpse of darkness within that actually makes this so much more engaging than you might expect it to be.