Beach Read: a light rom com
Title: Beach Read
Author: Emily Henry, narrated by Julia Whelan
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Pages: 361
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Who will like it? Readers of family dramas in small towns, & romance on the
*slightly* explicit side.
I’m literally reading 10 books at the same time right now (peep Goodreads) as I get through my winter break reading, and it’s starting to feel confusing. So I think the sweet spot is 4 to 6 books, and not trying to finish everything at the same time.
Anyways, Beach Read is a rom-com in book form. It’s not a love story written in the stars, but it passes the average reader’s standards, and it has a happy-for-now instead of a happily-ever-after. Many parts are cringy, the kind that makes you crinkle your nose, but we’ll say they’re cringy in a cute way.
We follow a women’s fiction writer January Andrews as she greets her writer’s block. She’s stuck in her work, unable to move forwards, but she’s also stuck in her life. Her father passed away because of heart problems, and she realized how her father may not have been the romantic, loyal man she pictured in all of her memories growing up, while her mother kicked cancer’s ass. After his death, her father left behind a beach house overlooking Lake Michigan and she flies from New York to sell the house, encountering by chance her college rival and bestselling author, Augustus Everett, who just happens to live in this small town.
Everett writes dark fictional stories, subjecting around people who live at the fringes of society with their realistically devastating lives (think suicide cults). January writes about perfect love for readers dreaming about soul mates and happily ever afters. Opposites attract, and I think it’s obvious which two become a couple, didn’t even need to spoil that. The point of the book being that we all have problems in life but we also can believe in little moments about the goodness in life, and the world isn’t good or bad and even if we have trust problems, we can love one other and find a pocket of goodness. I guess there’s still something valuable in books like this, in just bringing something lighthearted to people when they’re lost in life. We don’t always need dense or thought-provoking books, and a piece of fiction that’s gentle and easy on the heart does the trick.
