Beach Read - Paperback

Beach Read is the Emily Henry novel, not a list of holiday books: two stuck writers, neighboring beach houses and a bet to swap genres.

The bet

January Andrews writes romance and has stopped believing in it. Gus Everett writes literary fiction that ends badly for everyone. Both are broke and blocked, so they trade: he tries a happy ending, she tries the serious novel.

Fair warning

Expect a slow burn with a lot of banter, and more weight than the title suggests. One reviewer points to a father's affair during a cancer fight at the heart of it, and another found it less beachy than they hoped.

From the publisher

FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF PEOPLE WE MEET ON VACATION AND BOOK LOVERS! 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.

more romantic comedies