Ratings:
Star Rating: ★★★☆☆
If This Book Was a Movie Rating: R
Review:
Fair Warning: this title is very, very misleading.
The entire book happened in winter.
but the book really was extremely enjoyable, so I found it in myself to overlook it 😜
LET US PROCEED IMMEDIATELY BC WE ALL HAVE PLACES TO BE.
January Andrews and Augustus Everett were literary college rivals, polar opposites in every way. She’s an optimistic, happily-ever-after romance novelist. He’s a bestselling dark fiction author with a love for killing off his entire cast in house fires.
Needless to say, they didn’t exactly get along back then.
However, it’s been a few years since college. They both graduated with flying colors and went on to become successful authors in their own genres.
Since college, January’s been working hard on publishing her writing, visiting her happy parents, and hanging out with her friends and her perfect boyfriend Jacques.
Everything seems perfect.
But one by one, everything starts to unravel.
January’s mom is diagnosed with breast cancer. Jacques breaks up with her after six years.
At first, it seems bearable. Her mom starts to recover, January gradually gets over her ex.
But then her beloved dad suddenly passes away in his sleep, leaving behind a horrifying betrayal: for the last five yeats, her dad has been cheating on her mom with another woman.
They had a house together and everything.
It’s that secret that finally breaks January. She moves away from New York City, avoids her mom, and secludes herself at an apartment in North Bear Shores.
Suffering from grief and extreme writer’s block, January decides to visit the local bookshop to try and unwind.
That’s when she sees him.
Gus Everett.
Oh joy.
Over the next few days, January realizes they conveniently also happen to be next door neighbors, and Gus is just as annoying as ever. Gus proposes a challenge that mirrors their college rivalry: January will attempt to write the dark, moody book that Gus is known for, and Gus will try to write January’s happily-ever-after romance novel. The one who can write and publish their books fastest wins bragging rights and gets the other to promote their book.
It’s the perfect story of their rivalry.
But love was definitely unintended.
aight.
so.
This was definitely really good and really well written, but the main characters and their romance were really the reason I decided to rate this three stars.
DISCLAIMER: I know a lot of people adore this book and adore the romance and want their own version of Gus to swoon over, so this all may be a “me-not-the-book” problem, but heck this is my review so 😇😇
For the MCs, Gus was supposed to be this hot bad boy who falls for his college rival, but when his nickname sounds like a goose, it got kinda hard to take him and his emo self seriously. January and her POV were really well done and definitely an improvement over Gus, but after 350 pages of the same inner conflict with she just got a bit repetitive and predictable.
But more than January or Gus, the most disappointing thing about this book was the romance. Their grand “love” was definitely something the author was telling me instead of actually showing me, and that just made me sad. The romance was pure convenience and physical attraction. I could totally see them being besties, but beyond that it just got weird.
Like how is making out in the back of a pickup truck after about two weeks of knowing each other 1) sensible and 2) sanitary.
Now. I get that this sounds like I absolutely despised Beach Read, but I just wanted the second half of this review to be a thousand times more cheery than the first half, so POSITIVITY HERE WE COMEEEE
Here’s the thing that made this entire book for me: the plot and the quotes.
I basically completely loved the both of them to death.
I adored how all the writing mentioned in the synopsis was actually a real, major part of the plot. I read the author’s note at the end for how she came up with the story, and she said she discovered when she needed to write a book one summer, but all she could think about was her frustration over her writer’s block.
The characters themselves were vanilla, but their love for writing morphed into this amazing plotline about the trials and trauma and joys of writing a book.
“That was what I'd always loved about reading, what had driven me to write in the first place. That feeling that a new world was being spun like a spiderweb around you and you couldn't move until the whole thing had revealed itself to you.”
ALSO THE NON-ROMANCE STUFF JANUARY WORKS THROUGH THO.
January had a bunch of dad-betrayal stuff she was dealing with completely outside her relationship with Gus, and it was amazing to hear some of these feelings just written down in such a real way.
“If you think the story has a sad ending, it's because it's not over yet.”
“That’s the key to marriage. You have to keep falling in love with every new version of each other, and it’s the best feeling in the whole world.”
“People were complicated. They weren't math problems; they were collections of feelings and decisions and dumb luck.”
I also loved the whole idea of Happy For Nows. That Happily Ever After is really just a long collection of Happy For Nows. In a way, it was really comforting, like knowing we don't need to live our lives with stars and fireworks and shining perfection to make it worth it.
“Sometimes life is very hard. Sometimes it demands so much of you that you start losing pieces of yourself as you stretch out to give what the world wants to take.”
It’s okay to have bad days. Days where we feel weak and afraid and lost and depressed and anxious and exhausted. It’s okay to acknowledge you’re broken. Every single one of us is, even if we try to pretend it away.
so i guess what i’m trying to say is that you’re worth the world, love.
don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Friend me on Goodreads (yes, you, I wanna be your friend): https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/136268749-isabelle
Buy this book: https://www.amazon.com/Beach-Read-Emily-Henry-ebook/dp/B07XNKRV83/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1641697747&sr=8-2
Recommendations If You Liked This Book:
Book Lovers by Emily Henry
The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood
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