After seeing all the hype for this book, I was super excited to finally pick it up. Sadly, this one totally missed the mark for me. I struggled to connect with the characters and really didn't connect with their romance, which is kind of a miss for a contemporary romance book.

I did enjoy the excerpts of the novels Gus and January were working on and kind of wish we got more of them. But yeah, BookTube's summer fave was a major let down for me.

A magical combination of banter and wit and anger and life and trying to figure sh*t out. The cover and marketing are misleading. It is not a light-hearted romcom, though it does have rom and com it also has some tough choices and trust issues and soul searching. The main characters most certainly did not just hang out on a beach, as the cover suggests, though I do personally think they wasted perfectly great beachfront opportunities.

It's another one that I just loved. It gave me similar feels to Evvie Drake, a favorite from last year.

I really needed this book. It's funny, earnest, and smart. I've been in a slump, and this read provided some catharsis while also giving me motivation to start cracking books again. Henry is a writer I will seek out in the future.

“If you think the story has a sad ending, it's because it's not over yet.” I loved this so much. January and Gus' love story was at times awkward, raw, and the attraction between them was very heated. It made me laugh and cry. Oh man it played with my FEELS the entire read. It was the perfect balance of romance and sexual chemistry. This needs to be a movie. I can totally picture this joining other iconic Rom-com's like When Harry Met Sally, You Got Mail, and Sleepless in Seattle as an all time favorite in the genre. It is a must read!

This was not the book for me. I know many readers who enjoy this type of romance novel, and I can definitely see why it was on so many "Most anticipated" lists, but I really struggled to get into it. I need to be captured and drawn into the story right away, and this sort of fell flat.

This was definitely marketed incorrectly, including the cover. The setting isn't even an actual beach. It's a beach on Lake Michigan, but the characters spend all of their time on their porches, not on the beach. It's not a light read, although it is a romance. It's much heavier, more about family issues, & even includes a storyline about a cult as part of research for a book within the book.

In general, I do not read a lot of "adult" fiction. Don't get me wrong, I love to read it and "women's lit" will forever be one of my favorite genres, but I primary read middle grade and young adult books to stay on top of my work reading (I also love MG and YA). But, because of this, I put a lot of pressure on any adult books I do read. I don't read many, they often take me longer, and in the time I read one I could read 3 or 4 MG novels. So if I spend all that time reading one and then it isn't good? Hell. To. Pay.

So I was nervous when I realized how long it was taking me to read Beach Read. I got a good chunk of the way through it in one sitting and then I set it aside for a long time before coming back and finishing it in one other sitting. The reason for this, I think, is that this book is not as light or meaningless a read as you might guess from the cover. Yes, this is a story about January, a romance novelist, and Gus, a gritty literary author, old college rivals who reconnect one summer after finding themselves next door neighbors at an idyllic Michigan beach house. But it is also the story of two people whose lives are falling apart a little, January only recently after learning her recently-deceased father had a long-term affair while her mother was battling cancer.

Though I read this book much more slowly than I expected, I was blown away. As a romance, it is beautiful and easy to get caught up in, but there are also so many other things at play and I definitely cried ugly tears a few times. And, frankly, it's 2020 so I'll take any excuse for a good cry.

Summer is a time for sitting poolside with a drink in one hand and a light, fluffy novel in the other. But in Emily Henry’s Beach Read, the author of popular beach reads finds herself losing faith in the happy endings that her readers have come to expect from her.

Full review published on NightsAndWeekends.com and aired on Shelf Discovery

I enjoyed the story line. August took some time to genuinely like. I felt as though he could have opened up a bit sooner then he did. When he finally did open up it was the end of the story so it felt a bit rushed.

My Thoughts:

First things first: take those preconceptions of what you think this book will be and toss it out the window! Because I was definitely under the impression this would be a hate to love summer romance featuring two writers struggling to prove the other wrong. And to an extent, yes, that's what this is! But the bright, cheery romance-y illustrated cover did make me think this would lean more toward rom-com than serious women's fiction so I did feel a bit like there was a bit of a bait and switch there. However, it's not like that was a bad thing! I just wanted to point that out so you won't be going in expecting something different.

January and Augustus are two very different authors - a romance writer and a "serious" literary writer. As both are suffering from writers block, they take on the challenge of writing in the other's genre to prove that they can. I personally love when characters are also authors because it's sort of fun to see them talking about writing and publishing, it's almost a bit Inception-like? Or not, but I always think it's a fun aspect! Anyway, January is struggling majorly as she can't seem to write any of her normal happy romance stories as she deals with some serious life altering changes that has happened to her that year. These things are mentioned pretty much right off the bat at the beginning of the book but as it's not in the synopsis, I won't mention it in case of minor spoilers. All that to say, those things causing her writer's block? Are definitely some heavy things to deal with that are very much multi-layered and sets the tone of the book more toward the "serious fic" range of the dial than the "summer beach read romance" end. Which is a little ironic to me given the title.

Anyway, Gus also has things in his past that he is dealing with. Not only that, his childhood and events that essentially make him who he is and why he is the way he is are also pretty heavy. Taking all of that into consideration, you can see why I felt like a bait and switch had happened when I was expecting "rom com".

The story was very well told though. I loved the characters and really enjoyed seeing January and Gus' character arcs. It was great to discover how they changed each other over the course of the summer and how they came to fall in love. I really enjoyed January's inner dialogue too. She felt like a very real, well developed voice and that is definitely one of the best parts of Beach Read, in my opinion.

I think Beach Read is a thought provoking story. It constantly had me thinking how I would grapple with certain events as either January or Gus dealt with one thing or another. The setting was also a very summery locale so I will say if you're looking for that as a selling point when picking out a summer read, the small town setting here fits the bill.

In Short...

All in all, I liked the story and the characters but it was a lot more serious and sad than I expected. There is great banter and a romance I was rooting for but it really felt less of a romance than a story of two people figuring out their pasts and how to move forward. The romance just happened to well, happen to the two of them while they were figuring things out. The hype for this was huge, by the way, and I'm surprised because I definitely didn't end up loving it like everyone else. I enjoyed it! But I'm not sure if the discrepancy between what I expected and got is what lowers the rating for me or because I typically don't enjoy women's fic as much.

Wasn't exactly the light, fluffy romance I thought it would be. Better marketed as a contemporary/romance due to the heavier topics of grief it deals with. The writing was good, but didn't feel overly fresh or new compared to what I have heard about the book.

Exactly what you would expect from the cover - a great beach read. Great enemies-to-lovers story, with lots of family drama and secrets revealed.

I just loved this book!! It held so much depth and felt like a much more mature romance than Berkleys usual reads! I loved the character development throughout the book and the whitty banter between the two characters!

Another feel-good romance to keep up my reading mojo. Beach Read was delightful.

January writes best selling romance novels, but when her father dies and she discovers her parents' relationship wasn't at all the perfect romance she thought, she loses all her urge to write. But she's got a deadline, so she goes to her father's house on the coast of Lake Michigan to try to get some writing done.

Her neighbor gives her the most unfriendly, downright nasty, welcome, so she decides to just ignore him. Soon she discovers he is none other than Gus Everett, her college nemesis, who now is also a best-selling author.

These two are totally opposite, and well, you know the saying--opposites attract. And they do. The romance is a slow burn, and you can't wait for them to finally get together, but there are so many obstacles in their way. Lots of baggage on both sides. It starts when they decide they will trade genres--January will write literary fiction and Gus will write romance and the first one to sell their book will win. Some fun and dramatic situations ensue.

The sex is hot, but not too graphic, and the emotional baggage is kind of mature stuff. Older teens who are romance fans will enjoy Beach Read.

The "happily ever after" is expected, and it doesn't disappoint. The characters are well rounded, and there are a couple of side characters that add dimension. I fell hard for Beach Read. If you are in the mood for a feel-good romance that has enough substance to keep it from being to sappy, I would highly recommend it. I may need to keep up this romance trend...

I listened to my Version of this book. First let me say the narrator did a great job. She easily slipped into the voices of the various characters without being distracting which can also often be a nuisance when listening to audiobooks.

I would classify this as Chick lit with a literary bent. The characters are well written and fully developed. Even the characters who are bit players in the story feel real. There was no surprise about the main characters falling in love again but the storyline and the bumps in the road rang true for their situation. The issues they faced individually were not wrapped up in a pretty box and solved......and It made them seem much more human and relatable. There were times I wanted to shake the main character in her stubbornness to forgive but I ended up appreciating this trait and enjoying the book that much more because it made her Very vulnerable and real.

It doesn't get any beachier than a Beach Read about beach reads. Emily Henry quickly drew me into the character banter and the slowly developing relationship between author January and her rival, Gus. The description of the writing process, along with the all too familiar feeling of writer's block, would leave any writer shaking in their boots. If you like quirky, quasi-romances, this is the book for you.

I’m a sucker for any summer book with a pool or beach on the cover and Beach Read explains why. It’s meta, in that it plays out satisfying romantic tropes even as the characters discuss and dissect them. Their meet-cute and subsequent misunderstandings, for example, are straight out of Pride and Prejudice — only it’s between an esteemed Franzen-esque literary fiction writer named Gus and January, a bestselling writer of so-called chick lit. (Naturally, they embody the tension between high-brow and genre novels.)
Delighted to include it in Zoomer magazine's Read & Recommended department.

Hands down one of the best books I have read this year. I absolutely loved these two characters. I love a romance novel that has more substance to it then just following the same old structure that some tend to do. This book had me crying happy and sad tears at the end. Bravo.

Ohh my god, I absolutely adored this book. I had high hopes and was worried it wouldn't live up to expectations, but it most certainly did. Both January and Gus were such lovely, fully realized characters and I had such a great time reading about them. Their banter was absolutely perfect and I can't tell you how many times I giggled reading their back-and-forths. But this book isn't all sunshine and roses! In fact, there's a lot of darker content, from grief to recounting past abuse, so tread lightly. This was a book that made me laugh and cry and stay up as late as I could to read. Emily Henry is now going to be an auto-buy author for me (I really liked her debut and need to read more of her work!) and I'm excited to see what she comes out with next.

This was a fun novel about different perspectives on life and how they can attribute to your outlook and if you are a writer, how it affects your novels. January and Gus couldn’t have more different outlooks on life but that is what makes them work.

I really enjoyed the banter between them but it wasn’t all flirty; some of it was digging deep.into their pscyches.