Beach Read by Emily HenryMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
What happens when a romance writer challenges a 'serious' writer to swap genres?
January Andrews is a fairly successful writer of women's fiction, but ever since the death of her father she has been lost in a sea of grief and anger, especially when she discovers he had a secret life. A year ago she had a perfect life: sexy boyfriend; happily married parents; and a successful career. Now none of those exist except in her memories and she has come to her father's secret beach house love nest to write her overdue fifth novel.
Unbeknownst to her, January's beach house is next door to Augustus (Gus) Everett, a writer of dark highbrow novels and also her college rival, formerly known as Sexy, Evil Gus or SEG for short. Thrown together in a small town January and Gus snipe at each other, he thinks she's all rainbows, unicorns and happy endings whereas she thinks he churns our dark and dreary worthy novels. Both of them are suffering writer's block so January challenges Gus to a bet, who can write the more successful novel in the other's genre?
I've read this plot device before, or seen it as a Hallmark movie, but this is nothing like those stories. January is struggling to come to terms with her father's secret life, Gus has his own demons. Gus is researching for a book about a cult which involves interviewing relatives of people in suicide cults and survivors of a fire which destroyed another cult. It's deep, and grown-up, and funny, and sad, and sweet, and small-town, and a wonderful opposites attract romance.
I loved every second of this rollercoaster novel and January and Gus were such vivid, rounded characters it was a pleasure to see them reframe their teen years and events closer to home over the course of the novel.
My first novel by Emily Henry and I loved it, look forward to reading more by this author.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.
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