Beach Read: The feel-good rom com to add to the top of your summer reading list from the Sunday Times bestselling romance author

Emily Henry

Mai 2020 · Penguin UK

Über dieses E-Book

Two writers. One holiday. A romcom waiting to happen...

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'One of my favourite authors' Colleen Hoover, It Ends With Us
'A great love story' Jodi Picoult, Wish You Were Here
'The perfect escapist romp' Laura Jane Williams, One Night With You

January is a hopeless romantic who narrates her life like she's the lead in a blockbuster movie.

Gus is a serious literary type who thinks true love is a fairy-tale.

But January and Gus have more in common than you'd think:

They're both broke.
They've got crippling writer's block.
And they need to write bestsellers before summer ends.

The result? A bet to swap genres and see who gets published first.
The risk? In telling each other's stories, their worlds might be changed entirely...

Set over one sizzling summer, Beach Read is a witty love story that will make you laugh a lot, cry a little and fall head over heels. For fans of The Flat Share and If I Never Met You.

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'My heart ached for January, and Gus is to die for - a steamy, smart and perceptive romance' Josie Silver, One Night on the Island

'Full of banter, heat, and sexual tension, I felt the thrill of falling in love right alongside January and Gus. A gorgeous page-turner of a novel' Laura Jane Williams, One Night With You

'Funny, and seriously sizzling' Best

'If whipcrack banter and sexual tension is your catnip, you'll adore this book' Sally Thorne, The Hating Game

'Touching and heartfelt . . . I closed this book with a satisfied sigh' Jasmine Guillory, While We Were Dating

'Clever and funny, this is a tender love story' Woman & Home

Bewertungen und Rezensionen

3,5 Stars The title, the cover and the description all made me believe that this is fairly light chick-lit. But it isn't really, there is a lot of sadness, anger, helplessness, hurt, the feeling of betrayal, being not self-confident enough. Which all leads January to have a writers block - and a deadline to deliver her next funny rom-com book at the end of the summer. I didn't mind the more serious tone and all the troubles accompanying our two protagonists. It just got a bit repetitive after a while, especially when January thinks about her Dad and his second life. It became tedious. I also expected their 'bet' to be a bit different - that each of them would write a book for the other person. This wasn't the case, they only try to incorporate the others prefered genre into the book they are currently working on. But apart from that the book was really ok, and I liked reading how January and Augustus become re-acquainted with each other.

After her father’s death and the revelation that apart from her mother, there was another woman he obviously loved, January falls into a deep hole. Hopelessly romantic as she is, she does not understand the world anymore and has to realise that her parents’ perfect marriage was far from the ideal she had always pictured it. Her mental state also keeps her from doing her job: writing romantic novels. How can you write about love when you lost all believe in it? Totally broke and to overcome her writer’s block, she moves to her father’s beach house which she plans to clear out and sell and where she hopes over summer to finish her next novel. When she arrives, another surprise is waiting for her: her neighbour Augustus Everett was at college with her and her greatest enemy. He always looked down on her Happily Ever After novels while he himself was more of the serious literary writing type. Soon, they realise that they have much more in common than they had thought and somehow they come to have a bet: swap genres and see who is the first to sell a book. Emily Henry’s novel not only has the perfect title but it also keeps the promise that comes with it: it is a beach read just as you’d imagine: A bit of romance here, also some struggle but none too depressing there, all wonderfully narrated so that you just rush through it while enjoying the sun. It is a light-hearted escape to forget about the world and your own problems for a couple of hours and to only indulge in reading. Even though I am not that much into com-coms, I enjoyed the book thoroughly. At times, I had to laugh out loud as the author really manages to find a carefree and relaxed tone; when in other novels you again and again read about barking dogs, in “Beach Read” you get this here: “Somewhere, a Labrador was farting. “ Even though a typical summer read which does not weigh too much on your shoulders, there are some more serious aspects one could ponder on, but clearly, the romantic fight between the protagonists is in the centre and it is clearly meant to be enjoyed.

Autoren-Profil

Emily Henry is the author of the butterfly-inducing romantic comedies Beach Read, You & Me on Vacation, Book Lovers and Happy Place, all of which were New York Times bestsellers, with Book Lovers and Happy Place being Sunday Times bestsellers. She studied creative writing at Hope College and now lives and writes in the American Midwest. Funny Story is her fifth novel.