I was expecting this to be a light fluffy read (not my usual genre, but who doesn't need light and fluffy sometimes?) - but it was a different kettle of fish. At times yes it was light and fluffy, but at other times venturing into the dark, sad corners lurking round the edges of the main characters' lives.

On the whole an engaging and enjoyable read with some excellent characters and an interesting plot. Have to admit to skipping past the various "physical" encounters in the book (as I usually do, TMI in my humble opinion!).

The book is more of a "substantial" read than a beach read, so I'd have gone with a different title, but what do I know :-)

My thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an ARC. All opinions my own.

★★★✰✰ 3 stars

Romance enthusiasts will undoubtedly enjoy Emily Henry's Beach Read. While I do enjoy romance books, I usually prefer them to be less cheesy...and while certain scenes or lines in Beach Read did make me smile, it wasn't quite the 'laugh-out-loud' read I was hoping it would be.

This is yet another novel that seems to hint at an 'enemies-to-lovers' romance but in actuality the two leads are never truly enemies or hostile towards each other. January, our lead and narrator, has a bit of a chip on her shoulder when it comes to Augustus. While they were in college Augustus made a comment that January interpreted as disparaging both her person and her writing. Years later the two find themselves living in the same town.
January needs a place to write her novel. Not only is she financially 'broke', but her boyfriend recently broke up with her. January, who is still grieving the loss of her dad, has few options lefts, so she decides to move into her father's secret home. As she tries to make sense of the secret life her father kept, she finds it hard to envision writing a story with a 'happy ending'.
January is quite 'shocked' to discover that her new neighbour is Augustus, aka Gus. She is sort of envious that his books are seen as 'highbrow' whereas hers are dismissed as 'women's fiction'. The two strike up a deal: January will write a book without her trademark 'happy ending' while Gus will try to write a 'happy' book.

While I liked the premise of this book I soon found myself rolling my eyes at its cliches: Gus has an 'inky gaze', a 'crooked' smile, he is 'tall' and 'dark'. January's backstory with her father was rather superficial: she feels betrayed, that much she states early on. Other than that I found that she would often merely rehash her story (her mother had cancer, twice, her father wasn't the man she thought he was, their marriage was far from perfect). Her relationship with people other than Gus were very feeble: she has a best friend who lives in another city so the two of them keep in touch through texts...which were often very silly and seemed to be included only to add humour. Her mother was mentioned now and again but her personality remained undisclosed. We know she had cancer and that she doesn't want to speak about her husband's 'secrets'. It would have been a lot more compelling and challenging if January had actually loved her ex-boyfriend but she admits early on that she loved the idea of them rather than him...which seemed to go against the book's proclaimed self-awareness. Given that January writes romcoms it would have been more refreshing if we were presented with a story in which there isn't such a thing as 'you can only have one true love'...
Gus...he was very much the epitome of the angsty love interest. At one point he says: “I am angry and messed up, and every time I try to get closer to you, it's like all these warning bells go off”....which yeah, who says stuff like this? And how is this romantic?
Not only does Gus have an appropriately Troubled Backstory™ but he is just sooooo angsty. Just because his eyes are 'flashing' or he smirks a lot doesn't negate how annoying his 'you can't possibly understand me/I am a walking tragedy' thing he has going is.
Most of his lines sounded unbelievable. At one point he tells January that she is “so fucking beautiful” and “like the sun”. Like, wtf man.

Another thing that I was hoping would receive more focus was their books. January once says that if she were to swap her 'Janes' for 'Johns', her books would no longer be labelled as 'women's fiction' but as 'fiction'...which is a statement I don't entirely agree on. There are lots of female authors who write books with female protagonists that do not fall under the 'women's fiction' category. Perhaps January should have been asking herself why certain genres are seen as inferior to others, or why the 'chick-lit' is seen as 'rubbishy' whereas the popular books by male authors (such as James Patterson) are not similarly dismissed.
There a few paragraphs of January's own writing which were really cringe-y. I could not take her 'serious' story seriously, it was ridiculous. Also, why perpetuate this stereotype of the writer only being able to write about their own lives?

January is immediately attracted to Gus, so there is never a slow build up from friends to lovers. During their first few scenes together her stomach is already 'flip flopping'.
Their make out/sex scenes were...okay I guess (?). Although I've read far worse there was one scenes which was just yuck-y: one moment January compares herself to a 'toddler' sitting on Gus' lap, the next they are making out. Most of their flirting revolves around 'junk food' which yeah, I am not a huge fan of this 'bonding over our mutual love of donuts'. It just strikes me as juvenile.

For the most part I didn't particularly hate or love this book. I do enjoy reading 'feel good' books (some of my faves are by Sophie Kinsella and Mhairi McFarlane) but Beach Read didn't really work for me. I guess I was excepting a more 'subversive' take on the romance genre...but here there are tropes upon tropes.

I received a free ebook version of this book from Netgalley. Thankyou to both Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this! My review is still honest.
Beach Read is a romance novel following January and Gus, who were rivals in college and have now found themselves years later living next door to each other for the summer after January’s father passes. Both have their secrets and issues to work through, and both need to finish novels. They agree to swap genres for a bet and see who sells their book first.
This book is brilliant at capturing how it feels to fall in love. It shows the progression of their relationship so well and just brings to life how they gradually begin to care and have feelings for one another. Gus is such a great love interest too-he’s more vulnerable than a lot of love interests I’ve read about, and also quite reasonable. His tragic past doesn’t mean he mistreats January at any point, which is a mistake a lot of romances make for me.
Romance aside, this book also deals heavily with grief and loss, and January’s very complex feelings surrounding the death of her father as his secrets are revealed after his passing. It’s very skilfully done and I think for anyone that has lost someone close to them, this book will resonate.
It deals with the tropes and stereotypes surrounding ‘women’s fiction’ and the expectations of romance as a genre as not being good literature or requiring skill to write. As a romance fan myself, this is something I feel very passionate about! There’s also an interesting little sideplot surrounding cults, which isn’t a big part at all, but that I found fascinating.
This isn’t the full 5 stars for me for a couple of reasons. I think this book dragged on a little too long at the end and I didn’t really understand why they were still having issues, as there didn’t appear to be any! I didn’t get the same level of swooniness I get from my absolute favourite romance novels, although that is a high bar to reach for me. I also had an issue with the eARC that I had of this, and I’m unsure if it was a formatting error or if it was intentional (if it was an error, I will remove this section of the review after contacting the publisher). The very last chapter showed 2 scenes simultaneously, as in it would have 2 sentences or so of one, then of the other, til the end of the book. As I say, I’m not sure if this was just an error with the file, but if it was intentional, it really doesn’t work! It was very, very difficult to keep track of each plotline and not carry on reading the wrong one, and it did spoil the ending for me.

This was fun! It's a great premise and the characters are believable and interesting. I was hoping for a little more resolution at the end, though. I felt the main character needed to go a bit further in terms of denouement. I definitely wanted a deeper resolution with her mother. By contrast, the section with her father's letters was far far too long.

I really enjoyed this book; the story between the two main characters was wonderfully written and I really liked how we got to see what happened in both of their pasts too.

I also love the fact that our main characters are book writers, and we get to see their thought process, what goes in to writing a book and all of the things that come with being an author; like having an agent, getting books printed etc.

I always find this really interesting because the person writing the novel has written a character who is writing a whole other story, and it always makes me wonder what their writing process is, or if they enjoy it as much as their characters do. Surely, one couldn't write about writing in such a fantastic way if one didn't whole heartedly love it too.

Disclaimer – I received a free digital download of this book by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

January Andrews had it all – perfect family, perfect boyfriend, perfect life…until she didn’t. Homeless, single, broke and one parent less – she finds herself moving into her fathers ‘loveshack’.

The book touches on some very deep and personal topics through self contemplation of January and through her interactions with the people around her. I couldn’t help but join her in the self contemplation and have found myself coming out of the book with a slightly different mindset than when I entered.

The end of the digital download I received had formatting issues with the final chapter which was rather sad for me and I wish it hadn’t been there. Especially I was feeling the loss of the book already, yet was eager to read January and Gus’ ‘happy for now’ happily ever after.

Overall this was an exceptional read and I enjoyed the beautifully written storyline. I read in the acknowledgments at the end that the Author was suffering from a bad case of writers block and that ended up being the inspiration for this book, well I’m really thankful for the fruits of this particular writers block and if that is what the author can come up with when struggling to write – I’m eager to discover her other works!

The premise of Beach Read is what made me want to read the book. I found it interesting that two authors in this case, January and Gus, had to write a genre which was out of their comfort zone. She has to write literary fiction and him rom com. An added bonus is they know one another from college so the history between them could only add some great chemistry to the mix. Sadly I couldn’t feel the romance between January and Gus. For me it was only friendship. A bond which evolved thanks to them spending more time together cause they were helping each other out with writing their books providing tips and topics. I felt the pace was very slow and that’s mainly because not much happened except them trying to write their books and getting to know one another on a deeper level.

What kept me interested in the story was January’s reason for coming to the beach house. It had to do with her father. There was a lot of unresolved issues and her finding peace was definitely also a part of the storyline and one that kept me going now that the romance wasn’t working for me.
I liked January and Gus but as a couple they didn’t work for me. There are some great side characters especially January’s friend Shady but again as with the two MC’s I didn’t connect with her either.

On the front cover of the book it says rom com and laugh out loud. I didn’t get that feeling at all. Beach Read was kind of somber considering what January and Gus was dealing with. I went in with certain expectations and in this case it didn’t pay off. Don’t let my thoughts deter you from reading Beach Read. It just didn’t work for me.

I had a really good time reading "Beach Read". It's a romance novel that admittedly draws on some clichés but thankfully avoids those that are potentially harmful. While Gus may appear like the usual closed off/mysterious love interest at first, his character quickly becomes more fleshed out. It was never framed as though he was keeping secrets but instead shown how he slowly opened up towards January, thus avoiding unnecessary drama. I loved the chemistry between them – Henry really excels at that!
My favourite part about the book, however, was how Henry wrote about writing and the publishing industry. I loved the subtle critique, and I loved witnessing January's writing process. It reflected well how our surroundings can influence our work in subtle ways that can be hard to entangle sometimes.
Personally, at the beginning of the novel I grew a bit tired of January and Gus "accidentally" running into each other all the time – I found it a bit repetitive. The book was also a bit too cheesy at times for my liking, and I'm just not a huge fan of cheating plots (in this case it's a subplot) personally. 3,5 stars.

A second chance at the college romance that never was?
January is struggling as she clears out her fathers beach house. Normally a romantic and indeed a writer of the happy ever after she is battling with her feelings towards her dad and his "fancy woman", whom she has only found out about following his death.
Meanwhile Gus, the local author in residence is battling his own demons- struggling with the anniversary of his wife walking out, struggling with writers block, struggling with happiness in general.
It is inevitable the two meet, recognise each other from their college days, fall in, fall out and fall again but it is all done with some hilarious characters in the background (Pete!) and with some lovely scenery peppered amongst the angst!
It is truly a book you can read anywhere...somewhat predictable in nature but is that not exactly why we buy this genre? Everyone loves a feel good read and this one certainly does exactly that.
My only real issue was the last chapter had ridiculous formatting in the e-book. I don't know if it was intentional (I presume not as it rendered it virtually unreadable) but it was awful!

As a budding writer I absolutely fell in love with this book. The chemistry between January and Gus was great. This has been one of my favourite books of 2020! A great book to take your mind off everything and escape!

I really enjoyed this romance - both Gus and January have baggage and a past history. They meet up again living next door to each other both writing their next books. They strike a deal to get themselves out of their creative ruts - they will each write in the style of the other. Fields trips are organised to help their inspiration and they definitely will not fall in love!

They both have their own heartaches to work through and lack trust in relationships and the reality of love but they make it to right in this heartwarming and lovely story.

Well worth a read.

A perfect love story. I loved it.
The confusion in the budding relationship was so true to life and well written - the only less than believable thing was how Gus talked it out!
Both troubled, flawed characters, even though January has a history of happy endings, and Gus definitely doesn’t.
A nice easy summer read - just what the doctor ordered!

After a tumultuous year in her fairy-tale life, romance author January Andrews finds herself broke, heartbroken, and in dire need to write her newest book. She relocates to a lake house in a small town, and immediately has problems with her next door neighbor. Her neighbor turned out to be Augustus Everrett, her literary rival back in college. Augustus was a literary fiction writer, and was in a similar situation: he was having problems churning out a new book. The two strike a deal, where January would write her version of a literary novel, while Augustus would try writing a romance novel.

The book was a lovely and addicting read. The banter between the two characters ignited their chemistry. They both have their set of baggage, and the resolution of their problems were rational, though I found one story arc to be unnecessary drama simply because I think the character has made the decision clear, but it did set up a running bit in the book to be fulfilled. I love the side characters, especially Pete and Maggie. I wish there was more scenes with Shadi because she keeps on getting mentioned, and I would have loved for her connection to the story to be a lot stronger than it was.

Loved, loved, loved this book! January and Augustus are great charcters who are really personable. You can see the struggle January has, some of which has been made on assumptions.

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin UK for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

Objectively, this book is five stars and my mediocre rating should not discourage anyone from picking this book up, however, I found this hard to get through, I didn't feel like picking it up and I was slugging my way through.

Whether it's my mood or the format idk, I've a feeling it's having to read it on me phone haha I will get a physical copy or audiobook when it comes out so I can read again.

NOW, I loved the setting, like loved loved, it was perfect. January and Gus were incredible MC's with CHEMISTRY BABY. This was also fucking hilarious, I love the fact that they're both grumpy characters instead of the grumpy/sunshine trope (however, I do adore that trope..)

January and her conflicting emotions surrounding her dad were done so well, I'm very close to my own dad and felt it deep.

However, I do rate books mainly on my enjoyment while reading and unfortunately I just didn't love love love every moment like I thought I would :(

Possibly not the right audience for the book but I found myself asking over and over how many more unlikely coincidences will be put into this novel before the end. It was good in places but I struggled to read it to the end.

I loved this book and I really wasn’t expecting to!
A messed up guy meets a girl going through messed up times and they help each other find their way through it. With humour and a cute plot line. It’s a Tom com for sure and I could not get enough of the two main characters.

I struggled to get into this book but after a few chapters I was hooked. You had no idea where it was going to go. I loved the competion between the two main characters and how they wrote each other genres. I am glad it had a happy ending. Not the book I expected but well worth a read

Beach Read is an interesting name for this book, purely because you could read it anywhere anytime. It focuses quite a lot on the seasons: summer and winter, so I think it would be ideal whether by a pool, next to a fire or just simply trapped at home during isolation. I can honestly say that this book brought me a whole lot of escapism during a time when it’s hard to feel anything else but anxiety. This story and its themes couldn’t have been more perfect for right now, as it highlighted the highs and lows of life, the navigating uncharted waters. How pessimists explore times of optimism and how optimists explore times of pessimism.

'And that was the moment that I realised: when the world felt dark and scary, love could whisk you off to go dancing; laughter could take some of the pain away; beauty could punch holes in your fear.'

SO what’s it about? It’s a second chance romance, it’s slow-burn and I’d have to say while it's enemies for five seconds, it's really just a beautiful depiction of friends to lovers. January and Gus knew each other in college, they are both writers and in January’s mind they were rivals of sorts, even though they wrote totally different genres. Fate plays a hand and throws these two into close quarters as neighbours, and it turns out they both currently have writers block. We learn a lot about what it’s like to write and also what it’s like to love books. I won’t spoil any more, but please read this as soon as it comes out in JULY.


''I remember you.’ His gaze settled on me again, his eyes nearly as solid and heavy as if they were hands.’

As I was reading this I made a lot of wishes on it, and was really happy when they came true. The thing about second chance is when the truth comes out, and when Gus confesses, it is EVERYTHING. We had a thousand descriptions of Gus, he was so real and sexy and beautiful and broken and rumpled and flawed and I love him so much. January worshiped him with her thoughts and I would have given anything to hear what he was thinking in those exact moments too.

We are in Januarys head and in my opinion this kind of heroine is impossible to get right but when an author does she is my favourite type. I want to experience what it's like to fall in love with someone who might crush my heart. That pain of loving even when you think it could be unrequited. That vulnerability. That I can’t help it. It is all incredibly relatable to a hopeless romantic like myself. This was that done perfectly. January wasn’t annoying or insecure. she was just insanely good and real with us. This was all reinforced with her epic friendship with Shadi, and even Shadis own experience with the Haunted hat.

'Reading and writing [romance] was nearly as all-consuming and transformative as</i> actually<i> falling in love.'

The writing, wow, I have never read Emily Henry before (although she is on my tbr). It was one of the best romances I’ve ever read. It was filled with metaphorical sentences, that were so creative, they were designed stop and savour, I don’t know how she even thought of them. I could quote the whole book. This story evoked feelings in me that I’d felt before. It made me nostalgic for the other books that I love this dearly. It made me want to reread and chase those highs. That is such a special thing because this book was 1000000% unique and original, it just belongs on favourite shelves everywhere with those few other greats.

(ARC kindly provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Quotes are subject to change before publication).

This wasn’t the “laugh out loud” book I expected to escape into so I disagree with the strap line after the title. That said, I started out enjoying Beach Read and finding out about the two main characters, January and Gus.

My attention drifted several times towards the middle and I had to put it down before forcing myself to plough on. To me, the research into cults wasn’t of interest and didn’t reveal much more about the characters and I just couldn’t believe that January would take so long to open her beloved Father’s letter. When she did, all of the letters that followed were far too many for me as a reader to take in and digest. A sprinkling of these throughout a few chapters would have made for more enjoyable reading, for me.

Their relationship wasn’t well paced.-lots of yearning without touching or revealing their true feelings and then chunks of sex. I gathered they practised safe sex after the first condom request so ‘have you a condom?” didn’t need repetition each time.

The ending was predictable but I didn’t mind that. I was relieved it was upbeat. I do think the middle could have been edited to be sharper and give the novel more pace.