Wow, this book was just perfect for summer. Loved everything about it. As a librarian it definitely hit the sweet spot for 2 protagonist writers who love/hate each other. I'll be recommending this!!

I’ve been duped but I’m not upset. This title led me to believe that this was a breezy, entertaining, summer read that takes place at the beach. It was and it wasn’t. Confused? They rarely even visit the beach and especially in the summer. Beach Read is a romance with a whole lot of baggage or fiction with a romance.

January Andrews is a romance author who owes her publisher a book and time is of the essence. Gus Everett is a literary fiction writer and, January’s sexy, evil, college nemesis, and current, albeit temporary, next-door neighbor. Gus issues a challenge to January so they switch genres and see who can sell their book first. There is a lot going with these characters. This book has it all: family, friends, love, loss, infidelity, humor, and some sizzle.

My first real romance of the year and it was phenomenal. I loved this book. It deals with some difficult topics while still being dry and laugh out loud funny. The characters are so realistic, and I had the best time.

I’ll admit that I was leery on picking Beach Read up after hearing so many reviews all across the rating scale, but it just went to show once again that we all take in books differently, as I ended up really enjoying this one and am so glad I gave it a chance! This is a romance that isn’t going to feel all heartwarming and swoon-y as you’re reading it (but is still heartfelt and sweet underneath). It’s emotional and has a heaviness to it that comes into this story with these character’s baggage and struggles that they’re carrying. I really appreciated how real and genuine Gus and January were on the pages, and their honesty in working through everything both independently and together. Talk about characters you can root for! Phew, this story of new beginnings and love had me tearing up on one page and laughing on the next.

Alongside all of that, this was a very #bookish book which is always so fun to me and was a definite highlight here. Getting to come alongside these two writers dealing with writer’s block and as they found their inspiration again by switching genre’s with each other was such a great angle. I thought the writing was superb on the author’s part!

Beach Read was such a fresh addition to the romance genre. If you’re a fan of romance reads with lots of depth or that have the vibe of The Flatshare, I think you’d love this one like I did! (Just a heads up content-wise: there’s definitely some spicy scenes in this one, but they’re easy to skip over, and a hint of language)

Thank you Berkley Pub and NetGalley for the gifted copy.

Beach Read by Emily Henry was phenomenal. The emotional rollercoaster was what really made this novel, a must read for the summer. Then, there’s the cast of characters. Their flaws made them real. I liked both Gus and January. Their pain, loss, and fears could be felt on every page. Plenty of tension, action, and good dialogue to keep my full attention. I was glued to their story. The book was well-written. As a reader, I needed to read every single page because I just had to know every detail. Gus and January were broken both emotionally. January lost her dad and found out about his betrayal. Gus was hurt by his wife. Together, their pain and writing United them. Writers from opposite genres, it was fun following their adventure. Hope, healing, and new beginnings were also a part of this read.

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52867387-beach-read" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="Beach Read" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1589881197l/52867387._SX98_.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52867387-beach-read">Beach Read</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13905555.Emily_Henry">Emily Henry</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3166630861">3 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
Sometimes you just need a charming beach read for poolside, and Henry delivers. It's a meta story about writers challenging one another to write and overcoming writer's block...and other blocks, together.<br /><br />I had some warm fuzzy moments, some smiling to myself like a weirdo moments, and all in all the title gives you what is promised: a beach read.
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/13229544-erin-boyington">View all my reviews</a>

I loved this book. Easy going and oh so fun. It really is a great summer read that has you immersed in the story and laughing out loud. I will be recommending this to my followers and friends and family.

Beach Read is so much more than a beach read book, though it is perfectly that too. Emily Henry's writing strikes a heartfelt chord with her audience. January and Gus are a couple you will root for the entire time while reading this fantastic romance. I laughed, cried, held my breath and smiled throughout this book. I highly recommend!

Review will be posted on 6/18/2020

January father left her a beach house in his will, but this isn't just any vacation home. This is the home he shared with his mistress, whom she just found out about at his funeral. Talk about bad timing, right? January, a romance author, plans to spending the summer at the beach house, cleaning it up and then ultimately selling it at a profit. She couldn't possible stay at this house, could she? Things are even more stressful when January suffers from writer's block and she has her publishers breathing down her neck. To top it off, she finds out her next door neighbor is Augustus "Gus" Everett, a literary sensation, and her college crush. The more she hangs out with Gus, the more she realizes they still have a bit of a rivalry going on not to mention he is currently suffering from writer's block as well. However, they are polar opposites. Where January believe in true love and happy endings, Gus is all about keeping things real and at times dismal when it comes to life and literary fiction. Knowing this, they make a bet---Gus has to write a romance novel and January has to write literary fiction. While they are writing the summer away, they each teach one another about their respective genres and even include "field trips" to further their understanding. This ends up being a cathartic experience for both Gus and January who are both dealing with some longstanding emotional baggage. As you might expect, sparks fly between the two making Beach Read by Emily Henry one of my favorite novels of 2020.

Readers can't really blame January for her angst in Beach Read. Not only did her father die an untimely death (after her mother beat cancer!), she also finds out he lived a double life. We find out why this is as the story unfolds, but either way, it's a lot for her to process. January can't hide from it though, she has to face it by living in her father's beach house. January is suffering from writer's block and having some sort of existential crisis as a writer. She is a romance writer, which should be all about happy endings, but after what happened with her father, she is feeling uninspired. This is where Gus comes in.

Gus lives next door and while they started off a bit rough (and that's putting it mildly), they get to know each other again in Beach Read. Their relationship develops through a love of literature, but they also tackle some ongoing issues they have by writing novels from a different genre. Gus, who is a hardcore realist, and doesn't really believe in a one true love, has to deal some emotional scars he has from his last relationship. While writing literary fiction, January is able to process some issues of her own as well as the trauma from the past year.

But January and Gus's relationship isn't all about writing in Beach Read. While writing is the glue that holds them together, they have a genuine connection and their romance was definitely a slow burn. I love a slow burn and Henry does it very well. Their discussions, the witty banter, and the behind the scenes look at writing a novel was all very memorable. I enjoyed every second of it!

If you are a looking for a smart beach read that has a lot of heart, but also explores some important issues in women's fiction, explores second chances, as well as the importance of mental health, you'll appreciate Beach Read. It is one of my favorite beach reads of the summer and I recommend it, especially if you are a bookworm.

Beach Read by @emilyhenrywrites ☀️ This book was literally perfect! I laughed, I cried, and I swooned! 💕

@emilyhenrywrites delivers a pitch perfect novel about love, loss, searching for closure, and maybe falling in love along the way.

January and Augustus were hilarious! I wanted to keep reading about them! Their chemistry was off the charts!⚡️ Beach Read will be available on May 19, 2020! You are not going to want to miss this book! 💛

Thank you @netgalley and @berkleypub for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review. 💙

I always love a good romance story and this one definitely filled that quota! While I was expecting more of a fun, beachy-like read, what I also got was a more serious one that packed a serious emotional punch. Right from the start, I was immediately in love with both January and Gus's characters and the banter between the two of them! Their personal backgrounds were also something that escalated this book to another level because of the intricacies of their lives and the heart wrenching moments that followed as a result of it. Overall, the storyline of having the two authors step out of their creatives bubbles to write a new novel, was so fun and fresh for a romance! This book laughing at times, while also feeling so many different emotions and I think that is what made this book so special.

I fell in love with Emily Henry's storytelling with her debut novel, The Love That Split The World, and this book was every bit as wonderful. It's a heartfelt romance about second chances, grief and betrayal. In the story, a romance writer and a literary fiction writer decide to switch genres — they're both stuck in a rut, struggling with writer's block. There's so much more though and it's definitely one to pick up.

This was cute! I love reading books about authors/booksellers/anyone in publishing because I can relate to the book world stuff that they talk about, so I really enjoyed that about this book. I kind of lost interest for a chunk of the end, but that may be more due to current events than the book honestly. However, in the last 20 pages or so it got my attention back. I'd definitely recommend this!!

Where do I begin with my love for this book? Although i find the cover to be misleading this book completely had my heart. I read this book in one sitting and was absorbed into these character's lives and I could not stop thinking about it for days after. This story has a fragile edge, tinged with heartbreak and longing and to see the romance unfold and develop between these two characters is good for the soul.

Great summer read, chick-lit, romance story with some serious subjects thrown it. Not your typical beach read! It was fun and I definitely did not want to put it down. The chemistry between the two main characters is undeniable - and the preface is pretty unique. If you’re a fan of Elin Hilderbrand, Jane Green, JoJo Moyes or chick-lit in general, you’ll enjoy this book! Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

Thanks to Netgalley for a chance to read this book.
This was a really good read. It had a slow start, but once it got going I found it a really engaging story and quickly became emotionally invested. January, a writer, moves into her fathers house with the intention of selling it after his death. She is navigating a tense relationship with her mother, her feelings towards her dead father, and the discovery that he had been cheating on her mother. While navigating that, she is trying to write her next book. On top of everything else, she soon discovers that her grumpy neighbor is actually an old college rival, Augustus.

I think thats what I liked most about this book, is that it felt very grounded. January is stressed about her job as she tries and fails to write, stressed about money, stressed about her family and how they aren't talking about painful topics, mourning her father, and then navigating complicated feelings towards Augustus. Nothing in this book is clean or uncomplicated, but everything feels all the more real because of it. The emotions come across as genuine. The romance isn't perfect, but is all the better because of that lack of perfection. Both January and Augustus come with previous problems and those problems manifest in their relationship, but they work to move through them together.

The book puts as much emphasis on the characters relationship with others as it does on the relationship between January and Augustus. All of the relationships intersect with and impact each other.

Overall this was a better read than I was expecting. The first 20% was a little slow, but once you get into the book it really grabs you.

As the Disney folks reminded us in Beauty & the Beast, it's a "tale as old as time." But author Emily Henry has put her unique stamp on a classic tale, and made it more than just a romantic romp. Beach Read may have a fluffy title, but there is real substance to Henry's story of two writers who must overcome heartbreak, and set aside their preconceived ideas and assumptions about each other, and life, to forge a relationship.

January has come to North Bear Shores, Michigan for the summer. Her previous books -- romantic comedies -- have sold well, but the royalties have stopped flowing in and she's down to just a few dollars in her bank account. Her next book is due at the end of the summer, but she's suffering from a severe case of writer's block that she needs to break through in order to meet her deadline. She's endured a lot in the past year. Her beloved father's sudden, unexpected death was followed by shocking revelations about his life. January learned everything she knew about love and life from her parents. An only child, her parents doted on and supported her. But more importantly, they modeled a loving, committed, demonstrative relationship that she held up as an ideal. Once, when she was a child, they briefly separated, but soon reconciled. To January, it seemed that her family always emerged from troubled times stronger, with more love and laughter than before the dark days. Her father stood by her mother through two successful cancer battles. So January was flabbergasted to learn that her father had an extramarital relationship that spanned years and took place on weekends at his secret lake house. She found out about the affair at his funeral when a strange woman introduced herself as an "old friend" of January's father, and presented January with an envelope and a key. January immediately knew why the woman was there, and her suspicions were confirmed when her mother hissed, "Sonya," revealing that her mother had known about her father's relationship. But her mother refuses to discuss the matter. Sonya tells January that her father wanted her to have the beautiful house on Lake Michigan. Now she needs to dispose of her father's personal property, sell the house, and "write a romance despite having recently lost close to all faith in love and humanity."

January quickly discovers that her next-door neighbor is none other than her college rival, Gus. In the ensuing years, Gus has used his full name -- Augustus Everett -- because he has become a published author of a serious book that remained on the bestseller list for five weeks. But in college, he was known as Sexy, Evil Gus, and January was "minorly besotted with him and his prose." January felt Gus didn't take her seriously after she presented him a short story to be critiqued and he told her, "Let me guess: Everyone lives happily ever after. Again." At that point, January was not yet a romance writer, but she was writing "romantically, about a good world, where things happened for a reason, where love and human connection were all that really mattered." During college the two of them competed for recognition and writing prizes, but barely spoke until one fateful night at a fraternity party . . .

January and Gus are reunited in his aunt's local bookstore and their journey to happily-ever-after begins. Gus proposes a bet. He will spend the summer writing a romance, and January will write the kind of "bleak literary fiction" that Gus has previously published. They will take each other on field trips designed to illuminate the important components of the type of fiction each will be writing. Gus takes January to the burned-out remains of a cult tucked deep into the forest and she accompanies him when he spends hours interviewing a survivor who was raised there. January takes Gus line dancing, to a drive-in movie, and on other romantic adventures. They agree that "whoever sells their book first -- with a pen name, if you prefer -- wins." The loser will have to promote the winner's book by writing an endorsement for the cover, recommending it during interviews, and choosing it when judging for book clubs. Gus throws in another stipulation: "Promise not to fall in love with me."

The secret to Beach Read's charm is the crisp, snappy, and frequently hilarious conversations between January and Gus as the weeks pass. There is also much they don't say as each struggles to regain confidence in their writing . . . and themselves.

Henry credibly examines both January's grief and rage. January feels she can't write another love story because the stories she crafts mean so much to her, and she can't deliver a book to her readers that she doesn't believe in. After all, her whole perspective on life and relationships has been disrupted, rocked to its very foundation by her father's deceit. She was so close to her parents, but also felt pressure not to add to her parents' worries as her mother fought for her life. For years, January was so afraid that her mother would die, she did everything she could to make her parents proud, spending time with them, and publishing her first book at the age of twenty-five. She even fell in love with Jacques, a handsome doctor. Now her father is suddenly gone and she can never ask him all the questions that keep her up at night, never confront him with her frustration about all the years she spent carefully constructing a life free from complications. She has broken off her long-term relationship with Jacques, realizing in the weeks following her father's death when she was depressed and questioning everything she had always assumed to be true, that he could not provide the emotional support she needed. Now she's alone, unable to talk to her mother about her feelings, broke and desperate to fulfill her commitment to her publisher, and living in a house where her father spent time with the woman who was not January's mother.

Although January began writing romance novels because she "wanted to dwell in my happiest moments, in the safe place my parents' love had always been," Gus, in contrast, found inspiration in his troubled childhood, "to try to understand something horrible that had happened to him." And his writing block has been occasioned by more recent heartbreak that he gradually reveals to January.

That the "will they or won't they" story takes a predictable path does not detract from the enjoyment of going on the journey with January and Gus. Henry populates the story with an eclectic cast of supporting characters, including Gus's aunt Pete and her wife, Maggie, who are genuine and endearing. January's first-person narrative is emotionally raw -- January lays bare the innermost thoughts, doubts, and feelings that make her empathetic, likable, and authentic. She achieves just the right tone. The characters of January and Gus are fully developed and nuanced, especially as they discuss the art of writing, and their dissimilar approaches to the craft, but ultimately learn how much they have in common. They challenge each other as writers and people, and their egalitarian relationship is a welcome departure from many romantic comedies that depict a weak woman chasing a strong man. As the relationship between January and Gus blossoms, there is no power disparity.

Beach Read is a delightfully fresh retelling of a tried-and-true story. Two enemies challenge and compete with each other and, in the process, learn things about each other that causes them to see each other in a new, appreciative way. That leads to romance and a happy ending. Beach Read lives up to its title in the sense that it is an ideal story in which to get lost on a hot summer day on a beach, by a lake or pool, or in a hammock in one's own back yard.

Beach Read has gotten a ton of buzz this Spring, and I liked it a lot! January Andrews is a romance author and has been having a rough time of it lately. She has no money, she's struggling to write a book that her editor won't stop asking for, and to top it off, she is forced to move into a beach house given to her by her adulterous dead father. What could be worse, right? Well, then she meets Augustus Everett, her college nemesis, who happens to live next door. He's a bonafide acclaimed author, but he's also struggling with writer's block. One night, after a healthy amount of alcohol, they decide to switch places- he'll write a romance and she'll write the next Great American Novel. They agree to go on excursions to educate each other about their specialties.

This was a quick, fun read, and I really liked the back story of January's mom and dad. I also totally saw the ending coming between January and Augustus, but it was fun and a nice light read...perfect for summer.

Just like the title says, this book is a beach read. It's a light, feel-good kind of book that is going to appeal to a wide variety of readers.

Based on the cover and the high ratings I was under the assumption this was going to be a fun, light & witty ‘beach’ read. Unfortunately it was none of those things... it was much ‘heavier’ than I thought it would be.

I really think I could’ve gotten past my expectations if several things had not annoyed me so much. Firstly, the banter between the characters. For the most part, it was unnecessary fluff that at times didn’t make any sense to me at all... example-
“I’m not the world’s biggest beach guy.” “Well, of course not,” I said. “If you were, you’d be wearing a T-shirt or a hat that advertised that.” “Exactly,” he agreed. “Anyway, I actually prefer this beach in winter.” “Really? Because in winter, I’d just prefer to be dead.”
Ok? Secondly, several descriptions were repeated over & over to a distracting degree... between ‘heat’ in her body parts, his ‘crooked’ mouth and the smell of his breath... I felt like ‘here we go again’.

I did find myself interested in the premise of the writing challenge and wished that had been more of the focus of the story rather than the romance... think that may have saved this for me.

All in all, I did not work for me.

Disclaimer: Romance is not a genre that I particularly enjoy so this inevitably shows in my review.