READING: Beach Read by Emily Henry

Publication date: May 19 2020
Published by: Berkley
Genre: Contemporary, Adult, Romance

Rating:

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.

I wasn't a fan of this one :/ It fell flat for me and in my opinion, it is way overhyped.
To be honest, its premise didn't really draw me in, but seeing how much every one else loved it, I thought why not? But see, I knew better. And somehow I still fell for the hype. I should have trusted my instinct and steered clear.

The good:
January and Gus's banter. It was witty and funny and it actually made me laugh out loud a couple of times.

The bad:
Everything else.
The story was not convincing at all. Too many "coincidences" and too much far-fetchedness (pretty sure that's not a word), even for a romance book.
Plus, I thought it was a bit sexist. You have a woman author who writes romance books one one side, and a guy author who writes fiction novels on the other. Now, the romance genre is presented as the laughingstock of the literary world, while fiction is a "serious" genre. The whole story is about the woman author trying to prove to the guy author that her work needs to be takes as seriously as his.
Um why? Isn't that sort of a given? And if the guy doesn't think they are both equals, why the hell am I even reading about him? Why would the woman need to prove anything? And not only this, but we got to see her struggling to write a "serious" book, but never find out how the guy's romance book came out. Only that he got more money for it, which: duh.

Also, you know what I am just over in books with even a hint of romance? How women are all nervous wrecks when they talk to a guy, practically spazzing and constantly questioning everything they say, while the guy is so calm, and cool and whatever he says sounds like the most interesting thing ever?
That's what happened here. There is a scene in Gus's car where he and January talk and she was just a hot mess, even her thoughts didn't make any sense, and Gus was so chill, but kind of arrogant too, especially when he saw the effect he had on January. Why can't women have that effect on men in romance novels? Why do women have to be the insecure ones ALL.THE.TIME?
I wanted to yell at her "Get it together girl!"
Spoiler alert: she didn't get it together.

The ending was even more painful when Henry tried to force the "January's dad is a good person after all" down my throat. He was scum, no matter how many soppy letters he writes.
Plus the insta love came out of nowhere! Obviously, I expected these two to end up together, but all this professing of love after they slept together once and Gus being such a dick to January after? Nuh-uh. Not buying it.

Beach Read wasn't for me. It was slow paced (agonisingly bad, more like) and not interesting at all.
There are so many contemporary romances out there which are far better than this. Don't waste your time.