When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. You can get the audiobook by clicking here, or get a copy of the physical book by clicking the button below.Ī 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.Īugustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. It is narrated by Julia Whelan, who has also performed books such as Educated, The Giver of Stars, Pretty Things, The Wife Stalker, The Great Alone, Gone Girl etc. She was itching to write, but no sparks of an idea or story were coming to her, so she started researching and thinking about writer’s block itself…and now here we are!Īnd the audiobook is wonderful too if you’d like to be read to.

I love that the author wrote this book, about writer’s block, because she actually had writer’s block.

Through their genre-swap Gus and January are researching a cult called New Eden though, and there are a few dark topics and moments touched on, so be aware of that going into it. They even talk about their favorite reviews, like the guy that left one star on Amazon saying “Did not order Book” or the ones who explain what the author was ‘really’ trying to do.

Like when you’re watching a movie and the lead suddenly turns to the camera and speaks to you directly, letting you in on a little secret. Plus the book is packed with hilarious details about the writing process. And while it’s no surprise that they become involved it was beautiful to watch them uncover things about each other and help the other grow and move through their insecurities and past trauma. The characters in Beach Read are wonderful, well actually they’re pretty flawed, but they’re wonderfully developed. They help each other with different research methods and activities, which naturally end up like bizarre sorts of dates as they both write their next novels. They enter into a bet that the other person couldn’t swap genres for their next book. January and Gus are both novelists who end up living next door to each other (for reasons I won’t reveal in order to avoid spoilers).

I’ve read a lot of romance books lately, from steamy to rom-com, to cry-your-eyes-out-heartbreaking and I was starting to think there were no really new stories in the world. Although how a book that involves researching a murder-suicide cult can possibly be this cute I really don’t know. I was only a few chapters in when I knew I was going to love this book. Thank you to Berkley for gifting me a review copy of Beach Read by Emily Henry.

January beach read