This touched me a lot deeper than I thought it would. It has a yellow, cheery cover—one would expect complete happiness. But the message was thoughtful and had so much meaning behind it. Beach Read will make you laugh out loud, cause insane happiness, and might cause you to shed a tear or two. I know I couldn’t stop those measly little tears from falling from my face.

While this is all romance, it took a familiar plot and completely made it it’s own. I don’t know why I always have such a soft spot for the “emotionally unattached” hero that really feels more deeply then we give him credit for. Cliche? Maybe. But it totally worked for Gus! He was so damn dreamy!

Ever since we’re introduced to him in the book, the sparks fly off the pages. The tension anytime January and Gus were together was delicious. I felt it deep within my bones. The angst made butterflies appear in my stomach because all I wanted was for these two characters to just get it together already!

What made this particular read so special was that it spoke directly to a bookworms heart. Henry wrote this story just for me. I felt that pain January felt. I felt her joy and I felt the moment she fell in love. If you’re looking for a book that has it all—romance, swoons, hard times, betrayals, and hope, don’t pass this one by! I wish I could read it again for the first time.

This book is hilarious, heartfelt, and a wonderful slow burn. The main characters fizz with chemistry and banter.The secondary characters, Gus's aunts and January's best friend Shadi, give depth to our heroes and provide insights into both characters while also feeling like fully fleshed out people in their own right. I really enjoyed this book.

I accidentally read this in a day and a half when I had intended to take my time with it because I was just so taken in by our main characters January and Gus! I thought the premise of them being writers and old college rivals who swap genres on a bet to shake off the writer's block was fun and unique, but this book's real strength was in drawing the deep emotions out of each of them in a way that felt believable and also brought them together. The end felt a little uneven pacing-wise compared to the bulk of the book but I can't even complain, I loved January and Gus so much.

I'd recommend this one to folks who loved Evvie Drake Starts Over because I think this is another great example of a book with a romance that's just as much about dealing with losses and emotional baggage.

Beach Read is anything but the fluffy, frilly pageturner the title and cover suggest. It's a pageturner, most definitely, but beyond the romance and humor that fill the pages, there's something delightfully sharp about this book. Read it at the beach, on the toilet - I don't care. Just read this book.

January Andrews is suffering from writer's block. To try to kick it, and more importantly because it's free and she's broke, she heads to her late father's beach house for a change of scenery. The house delivers. It's full of memories she'd rather not face and sits right next door to the house where her college crush-cum-writing rival lives. Augustus Everett is a lovely distraction and January's opposite. She lives for that HEA and he considers it a waste if all his characters are alive and well at the end of a book. But clearly their methods aren't working at the moment, so on a drunken evening, they decide to switch genres. She'll write the next great literary downer, and he'll pen a swoony rom-com. Whoever sells their book first gets ultimate bragging rights and all the glowing cover blurbs you could want. Readers, you know what happens when two characters make a bet.

January and Gus are practically perfect in every way. Their dialogue sizzles. I wish I were half as witty and quick-thinking as one of them. Their relationship had the perfect inevitability that I want from a romance novel. They were refreshingly open and honest about how they felt without any of the will they/won't they drama that usually comes with this type of storyline. That's not to say there isn't plenty of drama in this book, but it's the kind that feels believable. No one gets caught in a silly lie that gets blown out of proportion. No one has a deep, dark secret that they unveil at the worst moment. Their problems were genuine, heart-wrenching problems that a lot of us face in life and our relationships.

Beach Read is without a doubt the best book I've read in 2020. It falls in line with my favorite romances that I read over and over. Emily Henry maintains the perfect recipe of swoon-worthy romance, snort into your kindle humor, and I'm not crying, you're crying heart and depth. This is one of those books that I will recommend obnoxiously to everyone.

The book's title and description are misleading. They make it sound like this is just a light rom-com, but both main characters are struggling with deep issues of loss, which give the book a more serious tone than the description implies. I would have preferred to read the light story that I was expecting, but I enjoyed this book well enough.

Emily Henry does a phenomenal job describing the heat between literary writer Augustus (Gus) Everett and romance writer January Andrews. Gus has been giving her a hard time about her desire to give everyone a happily ever after (HEA) since they attended the same fiction class in college. When they find themselves living next door to each other in a small tourist town on Lake Michigan, they challenge each other to see if the other can’t write what s/he would write. January dislikes that he assumes it’s so easy to write a romance novel, and his arrogance makes him assume she can’t write darker works.

After some tragic events and secrets have become unearthed in January’s life, she finds it hard to write HEA stories because she no longer knows if she believes in that. So now might be the perfect time for her to write the angsty-literary sort of fiction her nemesis Gus prefers. Every Friday night he’ll take her somewhere depressing, and every Saturday she’ll take him on various non-dates that might happen in a Rom-Com.

I fell in love with Gus right along with January, although she wouldn’t call it that. She’d call it lust. She knows from her days in college that he never sticks with a relationship for more than a couple weeks, so whatever she’s feeling for him, she’s sure will be short lived. Until their secrets start to be revealed . . .

This is a deeper book than the title suggests (by design, of course). To paraphrase a line that January says to Gus when he asks what women’s fiction is, she basically says that because her books feature women, it’s women’s fiction. If it were a man, it would be called fiction.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this novel, which RELEASES MAY 19, 2020.

I have never read this author before, but you can bet she is on my radar now. An adorable love story, with great dialogue and banter. Very witty. Nice slow build up of the relationship, very believable. I especially loved the rant about "women's literature". I also enjoyed getting to see a little bit about what an author's "process" looks like. Laughed out loud regarding the "Give up pants." This one will definitely make it to our shelves, and as a recommendation to patrons.

Such a fun, interesting read! January and Gus had such a unique relationship- it was unusual and intriguing to realize their personalities. I also enjoyed the way they wrote and communicated while doing so. This would be an enjoyable book club selection.

I loved this. I devoured it. I wanted more. I thought the writing was wonderful, the characters were extremely likable. Reading this felt like a punch in the gut, yet made your heart swell and yearn for more.

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

4.5/5 stars

January and Augustus could not be more opposite. While she writes romantic comedies, he is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. Neither understand the other. January would prefer all of her stories to have happy endings, whereas Augustus is fine with killing off all of his characters. For the next three months they must fight off their writer's block while being next-door neighbors. Their solution? Each must write a book of the other's genre.

I really enjoyed this book. I was expecting purely a quick read and romantic comedy, but experienced a lot more. Both January and Augustus have secrets and family challenges that added a lot of depth to their characters. I loved seeing that these two polar opposite characters may have more in common than they originally thought.

Overall, I found the pacing of this book to be solid. I enjoyed how the story was broken up, following both the relationship between January and Augustus as well as their writing and researching processes. I found the start of the story to be very strong and then around the 60% mark, The last few chapters dragged out and I wasn't really satisfied with the ending (I think it was wrapped up too neatly for the complexity of the story), but as whole I really enjoyed it.

This was heckin cute, y’all. It was the perfect amount of sad with the perfect amount of happy and the sexual tension was *chef’s kiss*. I loved Gus and his evolution as a character and that for once it was two broken characters not trying to fix each other but instead working on themselves *with* each other. The emotional turmoil of all the characters seemed realistic. Also I want Pete to be my aunt.

I loved this book! I've been in a little bit of a reading slump lately and this finally pulled me out. Beach Read is about 2 writers living next door to each other while trying to work through their writer's block. January is reeling from the death of her philandering father and Gus has his own personal issues. January writes romance while Gus writes literary fiction. They decide to switch genres for the summer and write the opposite of what their used to. I loved both main characters, their backstories, and the romance and history between them. This was such an engaging read that kept me hooked and wanting more. I enjoyed the side-characters and it was refreshing to read a book that wasn't set in a large major city, instead being set in a small beach community in Michigan. This was a great book and made me want to read more by this author!

You must read this book! The cover and description had me expecting a fun, cute rom-com, but this was not what I got. Rather than being disappointed, I was completely swept away by this beautiful story.

January is a romance author with writers' block due to upheaval in her personal life. She moves into a beach house for the summer to try to process her life and write the book she owes her publisher. She finds herself neighbors with Gus, a literary fiction writer in a similar situation, and they decide to swap genres.

So many things to love: This book is built on perfect details. Every bit feels so well- considered and lived in that it sucks you in completely. It is self-aware without being detached. The tone is beautiful- the book itself isn't comedic, but the characters are funny people so there were several times I laughed out loud.

Anyone who loved that Evvie Drake Starts Over should get Beach Read immediately.

The title and the book's cover don't do justice to the deep and beautiful thoughtfulness of this story.

It happens close to a beach, and there is a lot of reading (and writing) that goes on, but this book is really an exploration of how we balance sorrow, pain, and joy within the lives we're given. Highly recommend.

I really, really adored this book. It is straight up hysterical and the characters are wonderful. So many things here left me either laughing or grinning - or, in some cases, actually tearing up because Henry is as good with sad moments as she is with funny.

All this said, I do think the book is a smidge uneven, with the beginning being way stronger than the ending. There was definitely a point or two in the last few chapters where things felt a little Return of the King-y and I'd enter each new scene thinking it'd be the last one. Each of those scenes was sweet and emotionally valid but...I'm not sure they all had to be there. Or at least January's ~I knew I shouldn't have fallen for Gus inner monologues should have been cut; I don't know that I needed more than two of those. But I am still incredibly glad the I read this book and would absolutely 100% recommend it.

I can't even with this book, it was just so good. Delightfully romantic for sure, but what got me hooked was January's life. A romance writer, who was initially inspired by her parent's fairtytale marriage, has become disenchanted by the genre after her father's death and the unveiling of his secret life. Adding on to that, she is now broke and living next to the one writer she has always loved to hate. January was smart, relateable, and such a fun heroine to root for. Literally, a perfect beach read!

Romance, drama, family secrets, and quick-witted dialogue makes Beach Read by Emily Henry a must read for any location.

The concept of two novelists having writer’s block and deciding to switch genres on a bet is unique and clever. When they share their genre specific writing processes with each other, that leads to time spent together, which leads to romance.

I adored January and Gus. They were flawed, complex characters with compelling backstories. As writers they are blocked creatively, but they are also blocked emotionally. The process of moving past these challenges will endear January and Gus to readers.

The dialogue is vibrant, just like you’d expect from two writers who have a shared history. It was a delight to read.

Thank you NetGalley and Berkley Publishing for the ARC

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I read the book twice. I love a male lead with a lost soul. Their romance hit all the right spots and I loved it.

4.5 stars, highly recommended for all libraries, book clubs, and women’s/general fiction readers. For fans of Arranged by Catherine McKenzie or Star-crosses by Minnie Darke.

This love story felt honest and real and a little bit broken. Rather than focusing on “new adult” characters, this story has a 29yo falling in love with a 32yo, who are both still staggering a bit, as life hasn’t worked out quite the way they had originally planned. This 37yo can relate— I think that was the year I got laid off.

The only thing that kept this from being a 5-star book for me was that January, the heroine, has some really romance-novel-esque emotional gymnastics. When the love interest begins to open up to her and she starts to fall in love, the mundane day-to-day spending time together that relationships are built on happens off-screen. Within a few pages, her feelings about their relationship have changed pretty drastically. She flip flops back and forth, hoping for the best then being convinced it will all come down in flames, a few times. It’s a little YA-angsts just there. It is probably supposed to make sense with her dramatic-and-painful-year backstory, but the speed with which she went through these revolutions was a bit too much for me.

I will definitely be looking forward to more from this author. Note: this book could easily draw you in to an all-day binge-read, so probably don’t read at the actual beach, because sunburn.

OH MYYYYY GOODNESSSSSS! Finally literature gods heard my prayers that I’ve been requesting to read a fantastic romance that I’ve been craving for so long! I need something heart wrenching, shaking me to the core, help me feel everything at the same time: happiness, angst, joy, forgiveness, enjoyment, resentment, hurting! Yes, I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH! I want to scream it! Oh, thankfully I already did!

I have to add that: This is not beach read. This is GLUED READ. You don’t want to end it and you don’t want to stop reading it so you carry your book at everywhere as if it’s one of your internal organs.

I expected to read something more chic lit, soft, sweet story but instead of that, I got an amazing fiction, a remarkable romance juggles between so many things at the same time from friendship, regrets, cancer, betrayal, dysfunctional families and their secrets, enemies to friends and friends to lovers, rivalry between the authors!

The things I loved mostly:

-Sarcastic but so smart, entertaining, unique dialogues between January and Gus

-The soul crushing, tear jerker, heart shattering, intense father and daughter relationship

-Captivating the story telling from the beginning: I couldn’t put down this book. I actually devour the pages (maybe I accidentally licked my kindle but its screen looks dustless and I’m the grossest person right now!), I couldn’t stop reading January and Gus’ growing attraction, their struggles to open up and their scares not to get hurt, their stupid and childish actions towards each other. Yes I had some many “awww” and sighing moments. My husband thought I was secretly ordering cases of French wines because I smiled so much and I got appointment from the surgeon because it glued to my face and I’m looking like worse version of Joker right now! I cannot stop!

-A witty plot: Two writers were nemesis from college now neighboring beach houses. They both have their deadlines for their books but they’re suffering from writer’s big bold scary blog! (Did it ever happen to me? Nope, after drinking, words pour out from my mind like torrent but next day editing them when you are sober is the most painful experience!) Gus thinks that HEA doesn’t exist but he can push himself to write about it and January could also write some high rated, complex fiction instead of swoony romances! So they bet and replace their places but for inspiration to do that they have to spend time together by experiencing the shiny and dark sides of the life. That means January will take him to carnival, romantic beach and field trips to watch the sunset as Gus takes him to hike at the graveyard or arrange an interview with a grieving woman who lost her death cult member sister. See, it was impossible not to get interested and hooked from the beginning!

-Characterization: January and Gus seems like polar opposites. One pessimist who had problematic childhood with his abusive father and one optimist Pollyanna who loves to see from the brighter side even though her childhood was affected by her mother’s big C hanging over her head like the Sword of Damocles. They are suffering from loneliness and their wrong choices about their love lives. Actually they have so much in common and don’t forget THE SIZZLING CHEMISTRY and UNDENIABLY GROWING ATTRACTION!

LAST PARTS OF THE BOOK: Oh boy! Please prepare your napkins, paper towels, anything to dry your non-stop dripping tears! I’m not giving spoiler but Ms. Henry is an emotional torturer knows exactly how to sing to our hearts, how to break into pieces and magically gathers each pieces and heals you with soul brushing, poignant words. She is a heart whisperer. She knows how to melt your heart!

OVERALL: This is not only one of my favorite books of this year but it is also gonna be my all-time favorite romance books! I’m so happy my great written romantic fiction craving is over!

Special thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing for sharing this year’s one of the best books’ ARC COPY with me in exchange my honest review. And Emily Henry, thank you for reaching my heart with your effective, soul touching, talented work.