I enjoy books by authors about writing (like Stephen King’s On Writing) and I definitely felt the palpable excitement of the act of creating in this book (which is funny because Henry includes an author’s note of sorts saying “The summer I wrote Beach Read, I was feeling absolutely sapped of energy and inspiration”). The other is the love between a writer and the craft of writing. This is a book about two loves: one is romantic – the love between January and Gus.

If you’re open to a book that basically ignores its own premise and still manages to be good, allow me to make my case. If you can’t imagine enjoying this book without it sticking to that idea, don’t bother reading it. They make a deal: trade their genres and literary demographics and the winner is “whoever sells their book first”. One evening, she discovers that her next door neighbor is Augustus – Gus – Everett, a successful literary fiction author she happened to have a thing for in college. She’s trying to write her fourth book, but her heart isn’t in it, which is a problem because her books are all about hearts in love. January Andrews, a women’s fiction writer, is spending her summer at a beach house which was bestowed upon her at her married father’s funeral by his lover –an unhappy surprise, needless to say. I’ll start with the important stuff: yes, I liked it. Emily Henry’s Beach Read might, by its title, imply an easy reading experience, but it’s actually somewhat complex.

Beach read by emily henry