Stevie‘s review of Beach Read by Emily Henry
Contemporary Romantic Comedy published by Berkley 19 May 20
I’m quite ambivalent when it comes to books with authors as protagonists, but I was in need of something light to read, and a comedy about two people forcing each other to write outside their respective comfort zones seemed like it might actually work for me. I should really have also considered the fact that I’m not the biggest fan of romantic comedy tropes, certain British authors being the exception.
January Andrews has a deadline looming, and she hasn’t even started her next book yet. She’s been unable to come up with any romance plots since her father died unexpectedly, and she found out that his happy marriage to her mother had been a sham. In her eyes anyway. We never properly get to hear her mother’s point of view, so maybe she was perfectly okay that her husband had another relationship, because it gave her the space to do her own thing too. But January is all caught up in the ‘woe is me’ stage of mourning – more for her changed memories than for her father, it seems to me – and takes herself off to the beach house she just inherited, in order to clear it out and sell it. January figures that a change of scene will help her get her writing mojo back, and that her new living arrangement will work out cheaper than trying to find a new apartment in the city, now that she’s just split up from her long-term boyfriend. What January doesn’t factor into all this is the possibility she might have neighbours in her new life.
January’s closest neighbour turns out to be her rival and crush from her college creative writing classes, Augustus Everett, although it takes a couple of encounters for her to figure that one out. Personally, if I’d been obsessed with someone to that extent, I’d probably recognise their voice years later – at least enough to suspect it was them – even if I couldn’t see them for various plot reasons. Anyway, January and Gus eventually figure things out through a series of supposedly amusing incidents, and then decide that since neither of them is getting very far with the book they’re supposed to be working on, it might be interesting to write in each other’s genres for the summer. I feel for their respective literary agents at this point, since neither of them seems to have passed on this useful piece of business information to anyone else that might be affected by it.
To help each other write in their new genres January and Gus take each other on a series of research trips. Gus had already been in the process of setting up interviews as research for his next book anyway. These came across as too serious for the genre of book I thought I was reading, even with the occasional mishap for our protagonists along the way. My biggest issue overall, however, was my failure to connect with any of the characters – even Gus’ aunt and her wife failed to be compelling – and my consequent lack of interest in what happened to them all as the book worked its way towards its inevitable romantic comedy trope ending. Not necessarily a bad book, just not the right book for me, I’m afraid.
Grade: C
Summary:
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.
Read an excerpt.
