We know she had cancer and that she doesn’t want to speak about her husband’s ‘secrets’.

Her mother was mentioned now and again but her personality remained undisclosed. Her relationship with people other than Gus were very feeble: she has a best friend who lives in another city so the two of them keep in touch through texts…which were often very silly and seemed to be included only to add humour. Other than that I found that she would often merely rehash her story (her mother had cancer, twice, her father wasn’t the man she thought he was, their marriage was far from perfect). January’s backstory with her father was rather superficial: she feels betrayed, that much she states early on. While I liked the premise of this book I soon found myself rolling my eyes at its cliches: Gus has an ‘inky gaze’, a ‘crooked’ smile, he is ‘tall’ and ‘dark’. The two strike up a deal: January will write a book without her trademark ‘happy ending’ while Gus will try to write a ‘happy’ book. She is sort of envious that his books are seen as ‘highbrow’ whereas hers are dismissed as ‘women’s fiction’. January is quite ‘shocked’ to discover that her new neighbour is Augustus, aka Gus. As she tries to make sense of the secret life her father kept, she finds it hard to envision writing a story with a ‘happy ending’. January, who is still grieving the loss of her dad, has few options lefts, so she decides to move into her father’s secret home. Not only is she financially ‘broke’, but her boyfriend recently broke up with her. January needs a place to write her novel. Years later the two find themselves living in the same town. While they were in college Augustus made a comment that January interpreted as disparaging both her person and her writing. January, our lead and narrator, has a bit of a chip on her shoulder when it comes to Augustus. This is yet another novel that seems to hint at an ‘enemies-to-lovers’ romance but in actuality the two leads are never truly enemies or hostile towards each other. Personally, while I do enjoy romance books, I usually prefer them to be less cheesy…and while certain scenes or lines in Beach Read did make me smile, it wasn’t quite the ‘laugh-out-loud’ read I was hoping it would be. Romance enthusiasts will undoubtedly enjoy Emily Henry’s Beach Read.

Beach read review