Review of Beach Read by Emily Henry

Read for: Recently Added/ Anticipated Release

Synopsis: "A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.

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."

My Review: I was really looking forward to this book, thinking it would be a light and fun read for the summer. It ended up being a lot more heavy hitting than I was expecting but I ended up really enjoying it. It still had some of my favorite romance elements, enemies to lovers, forced close proximity, and the angsty/broody guy. I loved the banter between the characters, January was so quick witted and so many times the things that came out of her mouth made me laugh. I also loved Augustus, he seems so dark and brooding and stand-offish but really has a soft side. The tension between them was great, a lot of push and pull and build up. While it wasn't quite what I expected, a lot more drama and baggage between them than I had thought there would be, it was a great summer read!

My Rating: This seems to be the 'it' book of this summer and I am glad I got to read it.  It wasn't quite as light as I had expected, but it was still very entertaining.  I loved January's witty personality and the banter between her and Augustus.  I give it a rating of Three Paws and a Stump Wag.