Advanced Reader Copy Review: Beach Read by Emily Henry
Publish Date: May 19, 2020
Beach Read is not your typical “Beach Read” as the name and delightful cover implies. It’s about two writers working through soul-crushing writer’s block and grief, betrayal and deciding to manage it all by switching things up and trying one another’s genres all while investigating a horrible suicide cult. Yes, suicide cult. There is a substantial depth to this book, as if you’re eating a really wonderful, sinfully delicious meal that is also somehow good for you. You get the cake and the veggies all in one.
There are some excellent quips and monologues by the lead female author / character, January Andrews, who writes women’s fiction with happily ever afters (which is very meta and which I cannot quote as I read an advance copy) about women’s fiction and how it’s ridiculous that it’s a separate category from just plain FICTION because the person writing it doesn’t have a penis. I’m really, really paraphrasing. Emily Henry says it much more brilliantly.
The lead male author/character, Augustus Everett is the same “Sexy Evil Gus” whom January went to college with and had a rather one-sided rivalry with. Gus writes dark, nihilistic novels with no happy ending in sight. At first they butt heads, they make assumptions about one another but gradually bond over their writing and writer’s block and the bet they make to trade genres: which of course means that Gus will have to write a romance with a happy ever after and January will have to write a “dark and brooding book”. January might not have a problem with that as she’s just had the worst year of her life.
Eventually Gus and January get closer and Emily Henry becomes slightly obsessed with describing Gus’ dark eyes. I didn’t know there were that many ways to describe dark eyes. Now I do! It took me a while to write this review because I really wanted to marinate in the book a bit. I had a book hangover. Yes. It doesn’t get a solid five from me because the suicide cult was a little confusing and I’m not sure I truly understood why it was in the book at all. I would like to virtually attend a book club to discuss this. As well, I would really love to read the book January writes during the summer. Yes to the circus! I would definitely not want to read Gus’ book. I really loved this “Beach Read”. It gave me a lot of pleasure during a dark time in my life and in all of our lives.
WRITING STYLE: 4/5
PLOT: 4/5
WORLD-BUILDING: 5/5
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT: 5/5
ROMANCE: 3.5/5 (slow burn)
HEAT: 3.5/5
Description:
“Original, sparkling bright, and layered with feeling…” -Sally Thorne, author of The Hating Game
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 neighbouring 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.”
Many thanks to Edelweiss, Berkley and Emily Henry for an ARC in exchange for an honest book review of “Beach Read”. My thoughts and opinions are 100% my own and independent of receiving an advance copy.
