Book Review: 'Beach Read' by Emily Henry

January Andrews is an author who writes women's fiction. She believes in true love and happy endings, both for her characters and in real life. That is, until her life turns upside down. She lands up broke, in a beach house that she loathes, with just three months to write a new book. A beach house sounds pretty pleasant, right? Why would she hate it? Read the book to find out! To make things worse, she is stuck with a stubborn case of writer's block. The cherry on top is that her neighbour is none other than her college rival, Augustus Everett, who always dismissed her work as too cheerful to resemble anything remotely real-worldly. They challenge each other to swap genres, both for different reasons. As readers, we watch them doing research for their books, and as you can predict, falling in love. 

Emily Henry's portrayal of January is lovely. Even though during the span of the book, January is going through a difficult time, the author hints at January's otherwise usually sunny personality, and does a very convincing job. I cannot deny that I cringed a lot at some of the descriptions of Gus, which I felt were a bit over-done, but maybe that is because I have been conditioned to be skeptical of certain aspects of rom-coms. I picked up this book with the intention of enjoying a light, quick read, and I was not disappointed. However, this book had a lot more food for thought than I had initially expected. 

An important theme in this book is writer's block, and as an aspiring writer, this resonated very deeply with me. When you don't believe in what you write, or the concept you are trying to write about, it can be nearly impossible to move forward. It is alright to not typecast yourself only into writing a certain genre. Sometimes you change, and it also affects your writing. January's thought process while struggling to write was so well-written that I was often convinced that I was struggling with writer's block while reading. The way the characters built stories out of tropes, starting with the skeleton and then filling in more details, rather than picking up a spontaneous idea and just letting it flow, was an intriguing process to follow. This book was also a reminder of how bits of the author are wrapped into the stories they write, and how, if you piece together those bits from the different works of an author, you still won't figure out the entire person. This book is a testimony to how complex we all are. 

Another smaller theme that fascinated me was the fictional cult Gus is researching for his book, called New Eden. It is a very morbid aspect of the book considering its genre, but not surprising for the kinds of books Gus usually writes. To stay consistent with the overall rom-com theme, the author does not go into the gory details about the cult, and instead focuses on its overall significance. As a mystery and triller fan, however, I am positively dying to know more. 

There are many more aspects to this book, but these are the ones I found the most interesting. A book about authors? Emily Henry has taken the advice 'Write what you know' very seriously, and has done a fantastic job. In the unlikely chance that she reads this review, I would like to leave her a request: I would love to see you try a new genre someday, just like January and Gus. Maybe a book exclusively about New Eden? :)