Beach Read By Emily Henry Book Review

“Happy for now.

I could live with that. I could learn to live with that.

Slowly, he began to sway me back and forth again. I wrapped my arms around his neck and let him circle my waist and we stood there, learning to dance in the rain.”

(pg. 347)

About

Author: Emily Henry

Genre: New Adult Contemporary

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Synopsis

Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.

They’re polar opposites.

In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they’re living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer’s block.

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really. 

Review

Spoilers Contained Below

To the Beach Goers,

I think we’re all looking for the perfect beach read to read on the beach, and when I say beach I mean, plopping in front of your TV which has a video scape going on of the beach while you’re social distancing at home 😂. So that’s why I bought Beach Read, to live out my unrealistic fantasies right now 😅.

If I’m being completely honest, which I always try to do with each blog post, the title didn’t really seem fitting for the story itself. I get it, the main characters live on a beach and they go to the beach sometimes. And at the very end, the VERY END, they read on the beach, but it just didn’t seem like the title fit the storyline. Personally, I understand it too because I kept thinking what else this book should be called, but I couldn’t come up with something that seemed fitting. If you read this book and have an alternative title for it, what would it be? I think maybe something along the lines of Dancing in the Rain, In Your World, World’s A Part, or something. I don’t know. Did you feel like the title didn’t fit the story line?

It was definitely a summer romance type of book, perfect for a beach read, but there was a lot that went on.

January was obviously running away from her issues in the beginning of the book. She went to this secret beach house that her dad owned when he was cheating on his mom after she had the news she was ill. January didn’t know the dad cheated until the person he cheated with, Sonya, came to her on the day of the funeral with a key to said beach house . The dad wanted January the key because she would actually do something with the house rather than the mother who would just push it aside. Because the mom knew the dad was cheating on her, but she still stayed in the relationship, and they both never told January until that moment.

Obviously, January was going through a lot.

First, my heart just hurt for her because she found out her dad cheated after he passed away. Kind of still wondering how he passed away. Did he fall ill? I think that it was mentioned it happened suddenly, which saddens my heart. It’s never easy to lose anyone. But the dad passing away and this secret coming to light, tarnished this squeaky clean image of her father and that’s what hurt January the most. She couldn’t ask her dad why he did it, and she couldn’t properly be mad at him—she couldn’t get the closure she wanted. It’s also hard because when a person’s young, he/she does have a perfect pedestal image of your parents. He/she thinks the parent’s follow every rule, the parent’s don’t make mistakes, the parent’s know everything. So when parents do something wrong or they don’t have all the answers, it knocks them down that pedestal that kids built for them. I knew when one of my parents made a huge mistake, it knocked that parent off the pedestal I had of her. It made me see that parent as human—-like me. Parent’s are just older kids, and I think we forget that they mess up. January is much like me and loves to believe in a happily ever after and to envision the fairy tale ending. It fits well with how she writes and what she writes about. Because even when her mom got sick, she envisioned how their life could be better and how they would find happiness. She wrote from a place of love, hope, and optimism about the world. I respected that. But I also think it’s good to have a touch of realism to know that not everything is rainbows and pumpkin carriage rides because it really made her disillusioned with the kind of life she wanted to have. She thought she would have the happily ever after with the perfect boyfriend, the perfect family, and the perfect life. In reality, her life was anything but perfect. That’s life.

So having her parents not be this shining image she always had, changed her. This whole situation changed her personality where she was more unapologetic with what she said. And I genuinely felt like it came from a place of her not caring anymore because I think she felt like if her whole life was a lie—-not happily ever afters and her parents perfect—-she just thought to not care what others thought. So it reflected in how she was sassy when she met Gus that night on their porch. Granted, I would have been irritated too if my neighbor was playing loud music and I was exhausted, but I wouldn’t have yelled at them 😅. But she did and I got it. She was tired in more ways than one.

“I’d started publishing romance because I wanted to dwell in my happiest moments, in the safe place my parents’ love had always been. I’d been so comforted by books with the promise of a happy ending, and I’d wanted to give someone else that same gift.”

(pg. 134)

I love the reason why she loved romance. It’s the reason I love writing romance and reading romance too—-the idea of a happily ever after. It’s such a gift to read about love and to know that no matter the time, place, or people, love finds a way. But because her parent’s love didn’t seem real anymore, January had a difficult time writing. She wasn’t in the headspace of lovey-dovey romance. The deal she stuck with Gus helped get her out of this headspace to write a story that was honest to what she felt.

Let’s talk about Gus for a second because gosh knows he knew who she was the minute he saw her. I was wondering if he was going to admit that he knew it was her at one point or if he was going to keep pretending, but I loved the moment he told her he knew who she was when he was driving her home from Bookclub at Pete’s. I couldn’t stop laughing at the whole Uber conversation 😂.

“You’re literally shivering.”

“Maybe I’m trembling with the anticipation of an exhilarating walk home.”

(pg. 59)

She wasn’t kidding anyone!

But once they knew who they were, they formed a closer friendship and the deal was that he would try to write a romance novel his way and she would write a literary novel his way and whoever wrote it best, they would promote and sell the other’s novel for publicity. It was a good idea. I mean, I think it’s good to step outside one’s comfort zone to try to do something that someone else does—-walk a mile in their shoes, per say.

And that’s what they did.

“Gus was writing to try understand something horrible that had happened to him. No wonder what we wrote was so different.”

(pg. 134)

I actually liked what she said about Gus’s writing style. I can relate to both of their ideas of writing. Like January, I write about romance because I love love and I do believe in the power of a happily ever after. I also love to share the joy and hope of love in the world. But with Gus, I also like to write to understand a situation. I write about situations I’ve been through that I make my characters go through because it feels like looking at it from the outside when really I’ve been through it before. But when placing myself as a third party, I’ve found it makes me understand why I did what I did in the past and why a character would do it. It’s vastly different reasons for writing, but I honestly think that’s the beauty of written words: it has so many meanings and purposes for different people. It can be whatever it needs to be for a person to get his/her story out. And that’s why I think so many people write.

Writing is such a magical thing! ✨

With their deal, I liked how they had structure with the different research days. Personally, I wasn’t that big a fan of Gus’s research moments because they seemed very heavy and I wasn’t really into the whole New Eden thing. I understood why it was included and how it made sense to the story, but it also just wasn’t the funnest. The only New Eden moment I liked was the interview with Julie-Ann.

“Does that make sense?” she asked. “I just needed to be okay, and I could do the wrong thing if it had the right end.”

I thought about my mother’s diagnosis and my father’s infidelity, and the story I’d been telling myself since age twelve to keep from being terrified about what might really happen . . . I spent nights writing until the sun came up and my back hurt from needing to pee but not wanting to stop working because nothing felt more important than the book, than giving these fictional lovers the ending they deserved, giving my readers the ending they deserved.

People clinging to whatever steadfast thing they could find?

Yes. Yes, that made sense. It made perfect sense.”

(pg. 220)

Hearing Julie-Ann’s story as a mother, really put into perspective why January’s mother stayed with the dad even if she knew he was cheating. Because the mom was just holding onto something she was used to—the steadfast thing she could find—because with everything in the mom’s life, she wanted to be okay. So she stayed with the dad because he was her stability when her life was shaky. And yes, it might have seemed wrong, like “Why would she tolerate being in a relationship with the dad? Why would she stay?”, but she did it because she wanted an ending that made her feel okay, that brought her comfort. And I understood that. January now understood that because as a writer, she wrote endings and plots where the characters do anything to hold onto their perfect world.

In a lot of ways, this was part of January’s healing. And I loved when she texted her mom that she loved her. She loved her because she understood her. She knew that her mom was only human.

As for the dad, there wasn’t that much closure as mentioned earlier. But in the beginning of the book, January said she had this letter from her dad and I knew at one point we had to open that letter.

As much as she didn’t like Sonya, I think she really needed to have that conversation with her because she knew the things that January wanted to know. Do I think the dad was wrong for cheating? Yes. But do I think he was a bad person for it? No. Because he was going through a rough part in his life and he didn’t know how to react or how to handle the situation, so he naturally tried to escape and he fell back in love with his high school love. At the time, it was a sense of normalcy for him or a sense of the past when things were easier. Kind of like the mom, I think he was holding onto something that made him feel okay.

“When we lose them, there will always be more we could have seen, but that’s what I’m trying to tell you. This house, this town, this view—it was all a part of him he wanted to share with you. And you’re here, all right?”

(pg. 317)

Even when the dad cheated on the mom, he bought the beach house and had this idea of a life he could share with January. It was always about the love he felt with her and it was never about trying to have a “sex house/basement” with Sonya. I thought it was honorable that the dad found his way back to the mom and that they made it work despite the blip in their relationship. I loved how they were able to fall in love again. As the daughter, knowing that, it can be hard to accept that that was love—-cheating and then just staying in a relationship—but it was love in a different way. It was love where they drifted, were both lost, but found their way back to each other. And that was what was beautiful.

I truly do believe that the dad loved the mom with every breath of his. He just needed to find it again.

When Gus and January found the safe in the house, I knew that if January opened the darn letter Sonya gave her, it would have the code. And then I also knew that there would be more letters in it. When she opened the letter, it gave her peace and clarity.

And you know, I’M A SUCKER FOR LETTERS!!!!!! The letters just gave me the warm-fuzzies all around because the dad bared his heart out to January and admitted everything.

He wrote all these letters for every birthday about what it was like watching her grow up and how much he loved her. I loved the first letter when he described what it was like to see her the first time and how she gave him the gift of being a father. It was sweet to see how he thought of his little girl growing up one day to have her own thoughts and opinions because as a parent, I think it is kind of crazy (in a good way) to create life and to know that life and that person will grow up to be their own person one day. I mean, it’s such a beautiful thing. But what I admired the most about the letters was the dad’s honesty in how he cheated. Because not a lot of men will own up to cheating. The dad did. And he knew what he did wasn’t the best, but he tried to be better each day. I respected how he also apologized to January even if it was in a letter. One of the podcasts I listen to called Unsolicited Advice talks a lot about how sometimes when it’s hard to say something, it’s best to write it down—-to write a letter. That way, it gets everything that you feel or want to say out on a piece of paper. This was the dad’s way of being in touch with his feelings and never having the words to say to his family or his daughter about how much he loved her. I seriously think he’s where January gets her writing abilities. Reading those letters was everything January needed to get closure with her dad. She couldn’t ask him all these things that probably plagued her mind, but one thing was certain, that he loved her from the minute she was born and everyday after. Sure, he wasn’t the best person, but we all make mistakes that we live with. I hope January can forgive him for this.

January wasn’t the only one with parental issues.

And if I said it once, I’ve said it a million times, but BAD PARENTING!!! 😆

I kid you not, the main reason a lot of characters go through poop is because of bad parenting 😂.

Gus deserved better. From what I picked up, he was neglected and abused as a kid. His dad seemed like a toxic alcoholic who would take his anger out on his wife and kids. The dad also seemed unsteady in how he would constantly pick fights with everyone and they wouldn’t know who he could be one minute or the next. My heart hurt when Gus said how he had a dream, I think, of how he would pack his bags up, sit on a train, and run away. As a kid, I had the idea of running away too, but never to the point I actually did it. I think it’s just a sad world where a kid actually contemplated doing something like that because home is not safe or being with one’s parents doesn’t make the kid happy.

“Sure, he wasn’t a bright light, but he wasn’t the cynic I’d thought either. He was a realist who was a little too afraid of hope to see things clearly when it came to his own life.”

(pg. 204)

Gus’s upbringing made sense to his writing style. It wasn’t that he saw the world through a cynical sense, but he was battered and bruised as a kid to know that it’s not always rainbow, sunshines, and happily ever afters. He wasn’t disillusioned from a young age that life was this magical thing. So he wrote from a place of truthful honesty of how the world worked for him. There’s so much beauty in that when you think about it. There’s seven billion people in the world and we all might go through similar experiences, but the way we see it differs. When a person writes about that experience, it’s amazing when we can connect with the words or the feelings that we felt. Or to feel like we see the world the same way as others. Books have the power to connect people more than they ever know.

“I always thought the way you saw the world was . . . incredible. . . I never wanted to see you lose that.”

. . . “When you love someone,” he said haltingly, ” . . . you want to make this world look different for them. To give all the ugly stuff meaning, and amplify the good. That’s what you do. For your readers. For me. 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.”

(pg. 292-3)

I loved loved loved what he said here about January’s writing. I thought it was sweet that he knew she saw the world differently than him and that he never wanted her to see the world as black and white as he did. It made a lot of sense to why he said she changed in the beginning of the book because he knew who January was and the person who was being sassy and down on the world, didn’t seem like the girl he fell in love with years ago. People change, but I respect that he wanted to protect her from the harsh realities the world can dole out to a person. When Gus said “When you love someone,” he said haltingly, ” . . . you want to make this world look different for them,” I felt like in terms of January’s parents, they wanted the world to look different for her because they loved her. That’s why they never told her about the cheating because they wanted to amplify the good—how they were okay now.

I just loved loved loved the way Gus put it 💛

Gus and January’s relationship was complicated, yet fun. I enjoyed their romance, but it wasn’t my absolute favorite. I liked how they made each other better people. January tried to get him to open up more, which I respected. I mean, Gus was a steel wall with ten locks over it 😂. But he was trying to let her in and I liked that! We love a guy who tries!

I couldn’t stop laughing at how they had their little “You Belong With Me” Taylor Swift notecards at the window thing 😂. Big fan! The movie date was rated PG-13 and they took it to rated R. I found it hilarious when the lady with the flashlight interrupted them and told them to leave 😂! Somebody’s in trouble! The carnival date was cute too and how Gus’s didn’t want to ride anything. And we can’t forget how romantic porta-potties are 😆. Their inner writers showed when they crafted all these stories for everyone there like the Ferris Wheel Lady. They’re genuinely writers.

The only thing I didn’t really like about their relationship was that one moment when January was mad at him for being gone for however long and then he didn’t tell her anything. I mean, honey, give him time and space to open up to you about what he was going through. I didn’t like how she guilted him into telling her that he was going through a divorce and that’s where he was and that’s why he was closed off to people and love. She should have respected him and let him open up about it on his own terms. But then again, if she hadn’t yelled at him, he would have never opened up about it sooner. So I got it. But still, something as difficult as what he was going through should have been talked about more delicately.

And my gosh! The best man! His wife left him for his best man?! 😮 Sounds like a bitter rom-com if I ever heard one.

Then there was the whole part where he confessed that he loved her back in college and I just could not stop thinking of how people run on such different wavelengths because January took the situation much differently than he did. She thought he was a lazy, typical boy who judged her writing. They never even talked back then. But he came late to class to sit next to her, he forgot his supplies to have an excuse to talk to her, and he dropped his books so he could find a way to be there with her. So basically he was a fool in love with her! I mean, that’s sweet 😅. But it didn’t work. Honestly, here’s my advice as a cisgender woman, it you’re going to flirt, make it obvious because I can’t read your mind on what you’re doing! If you’re going to drop your books to “flirt,” no. I’m going to think nothing of it. If you’re going to ask for supplies all the time, to talk to me, just talk to me. Personally, I like it when guys are humbly direct. Like ask me, “So what did you think of my writing?” or compliment my writing or tell me, “I really like your outfit.” Or something! Don’t be cocky about it, but don’t beat around the bush because what you do isn’t as obvious as you might think! 🤧

Anyway, his plan didn’t work and January didn’t seem to like him, so he didn’t talk to her, but he still liked her. And he respected her writing, yet she criticized it. I guess because he wanted to mea her a better writer. I thought it was sweet how he said he never read her books, and then when they were trying to open up to each other, he was like, “I read them all.” I mean, get you a man who reads all your books 🤪.

Their whole fight was ridiculous and then Gus had to throw in, “I can’t be your Fabio.” 😂 I was craughing (crying and laughing). We love a Fabio!

I really enjoyed the ending between them though. After Gus saw his ex at a party, January lost hope that they would be a thing because the ex, Naomi, was stunning and she looked like she wanted to get back together with Gus. Gus would never. But Liked how Shadi was there in an instant when January needed her and how she knew even if Gus didn’t choose her, she would be okay because she endured much worse. She also knew she had a good support system when she felt her world curling down.

But OOOOH, the dancing in the rain part?! LOVED 👌🏼.

“I thought . . .” He ran his hand up through his hair and glanced around. “I don’t know. I thought maybe we’d dance.”

. . .”You were going to dance with me in the rain?” I asked thickly.

“I promised you,” he said seriously, taking my waist in his hands. “I said I would learn.”

(pg. 342)

It was this whole running joke that she wanted him to learn how to metaphorically dance in the rain. But now he was going to actually dance with her in the rain, which I loved. To me the metaphor meant that even if life was messy and complicated and they had these hardships, that they would learn how to handle it—-dance in it—-together. It also meant that Gus was going to try to see the world with a more hopeful light amidst the torrent of sorrow he grew up in and the hardships he found himself in more often than not. He wanted to dance in the rain with her and to promise her he would try to navigate it all.

I loved that. But what stood out to me the most was how they never got their happy ever after.

They got their happy for now.

I loved that.

Because Gus couldn’t promise her that they would be happy forever. And given both their situations, they know happy ever after isn’t always realistic. But they could try for it. But they could also just be happy right now. And it’s so important to remember to enjoy, live, and appreciate the now. Because it’s the only certain moment. This second. The now. I liked the way Emily Henry took two characters of different perspectives and found a middle ground of optimism and realism. It’s beautiful.

I liked how we got an engagement scene and Pete and Maggie were there. I bet they were asking about what type of rock was on January’s finger 😂. The bet was pushed into the background of the book, which was fine, but personally, the best didn’t play out the best. I liked how the publisher accepted January’s work even though it was different from what she usually wrote. And I loved how Gus supported her through it. In all honesty, I’m saying that January won the bet 😆.

Anyway, what was your favorite part of the book? Least favorite part? Anything I mentioned that you want to discuss more about?  What’s your go-to beach read? Let me know below in the comments as I love hearing from you all 💕

I hope you have a beautiful day whenever and wherever you might be reading this.

And as always, with love,

Rating

3.98 Full Bloom Flowers

Characters: January and Gus complement each other in the best way and I loved how they were able to see the world from one another’s perspectives.

Plot: Loved the idea of seeing two writers writing a book and falling in love. A writer’s dream 💛

Writing: Emily Henry has a way of relating the story to everyone in the best way.

Romance: Not the biggest fan of the romance, but they did have their cute moments.