Review

Score: 4.5/5 Bookmarks

Steam Rating: 🍆🍆🍆/5

Thank you to Berkley for gifting me a review copy of Beach Read by Emily Henry.

I was only a few chapters in when I knew I was going to love this book. Although how a book that involves researching a murder-suicide cult can possibly be this cute I really don’t know. But it is.

I’ve read a lot of romance books lately, from steamy to rom-com, to cry-your-eyes-out-heartbreaking and I was starting to think there were no really new stories in the world. Until Beach Read. It was refreshingly different.

January and Gus are both novelists who end up living next door to each other (for reasons I won’t reveal in order to avoid spoilers). They enter into a bet that the other person couldn’t swap genres for their next book. They help each other with different research methods and activities, which naturally end up like bizarre sorts of dates as they both write their next novels.

The characters in Beach Read are wonderful, well actually they’re pretty flawed, but they’re wonderfully developed. And while it’s no surprise that they become involved it was beautiful to watch them uncover things about each other and help the other grow and move through their insecurities and past trauma.

Plus the book is packed with hilarious details about the writing process. Like when you’re watching a movie and the lead suddenly turns to the camera and speaks to you directly, letting you in on a little secret. They even talk about their favorite reviews, like the guy that left one star on Amazon saying “Did not order Book” or the ones who explain what the author was ‘really’ trying to do. As a reviewer, that had me in stitches.

Through their genre-swap Gus and January are researching a cult called New Eden though, and there are a few dark topics and moments touched on, so be aware of that going into it.

I love that the author wrote this book, about writer’s block, because she actually had writer’s block. She was itching to write, but no sparks of an idea or story were coming to her, so she started researching and thinking about writer’s block itself…and now here we are!

And the audiobook is wonderful too if you’d like to be read to. It is narrated by Julia Whelan, who has also performed books such as Educated, The Giver of Stars, Pretty Things, The Wife Stalker, The Great Alone, Gone Girl etc. You can get the audiobook by clicking here, or get a copy of the physical book by clicking the button below.

Synopsis:

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.

Beach Read Book Club Discussion Questions

Spoiler alerts, don’t read any further unless you’ve already finished the book!

• We are first introduced to January Andrews after her life has imploded and she’s arriving at her father’s secret beach house. What were your first impressions of January? How did they change as we learned more about her?

• Did you have a favorite supporting character?

• January is suffering from writer’s block. Do you think it is solely due to the things going on in her life or is there more to it?

• January feels like she has to defend women’s fiction, but is that her projecting her own insecurities, or do you think that is a real issue in our society, that in particular, books for women aren’t seen to have as much value?

• Did you guess early-on that January and Gus would get together, despite her initial horror at finding him living next door?

• Have you read any books from a single author that were in completely different genres?

• From switching genres do you think January and Gus learned more about each other than they would have from getting to know each other without the swap?

• Would you read either of January or Gus’ books that were created during this story?

• How did you feel about the pacing of this book, were there any parts you would have sped up?

• January eludes to her relationship with her mother becoming strained after her father passed and the truth came out. Do you think this could have been explored more in the book?

• January and Gus end up engaged at the end of the book, do you think that was a necessary and satisfactory ending?