Book Review: "Beach Read" by Emily Henry

 

 4/5 stars 

 *Spoiler alert!* 

Beach Read wasn’t what I was expecting it to be and yet, that was fine. After all, the author did say the book was more for her than the readers, but again, that’s okay. I felt that the story about a writer moving back into her father’s Michigan lakeside beach house to write another novel on a tight deadline was definitely autobiographical in places.

 

“I did what any reasonable adult woman would do when confronted with her college rival turned next-door neighbor. I dove behind the nearest bookshelf.” 

Oh yeah, her other big problem is writing that novel while dealing with the awkwardness of her neighbor being her old college flame, Gus Everrett, a fellow author that traffics in dark, broody novels rather than romance ones. January Andrews is a romance writer who finds herself unable to channel her usual romantic storyline creativity, as the beach house she lives in was a formerly secret home her late father shared with a mistress. (Naturally, the mistress, Sonya, also lives in this town too.)

 

On a whim, January makes a deal with Gus to help them both write their novels: she’ll take him on day trips to romantic destinations to help him write his first romance story, while Gus will do something similar to bring out her angsty, broody side. In the end, both write their books, but each story is colored uniquely by the writer who crafts it and their summer together.  

“That was what I'd always loved about reading, what had driven me to write in the first place. That feeling that a new world was being spun like a spiderweb around you and you couldn't move until the whole thing had revealed itself to you.” 

As a writer myself, I found January’s plight around writer’s block to be such a mood. (While I may not be a New York Times bestselling author, I felt January’s pain acutely, but also her joy when her story started coming together. One’s brain can be like an overly sensitive houseplant with the precise conditions needed to spawn creativity, otherwise it’s like pulling teeth and all the joy is sucked out of the activity.)

 

While I could see the rekindled romance between Gus and January coming from a mile away, it still managed to pay off in the end with the growth I think both characters went through in getting their shit together.  

“You make beautiful things, because you love the world, and maybe the world doesn’t always look how it does in your books, but . . . I think putting them out there, that changes the world a little bit. And the world can’t afford to lose that.” 

This quote, drawn from a line of dialogue Gus speaks to January, rings true even more after having finished Beach Read. While Beach Read may not be your usual bubblegum romance completed during a summer day-trip getaway, I still enjoyed it despite its bittersweet nature. It read to me like a love letter to books and reading and the need for all stories to be told, in all their imperfect realness.

 

Happy reading! 

--BookOwl