Book Review: Beach Read
Sometimes life is very hard. Sometimes it demands so much of you that you start losing pieces of yourself as you stretch out to give what the world wants to take
I love Emily Henry, the first book of hers I read was ‘Book Lovers’ which I thought was really cool and wonderfully written (feel free to check out my review of it here!) I will concede it is a little bit odd to have a formulated reading list – it is nice to have a variety. After the last few books, I really needed a change of pace and that’s where a lovely, warm-hearted, good-for-the-soul rom-com comes in. Emily Henry’s books are the perfect antidote for the drab and the dreary.
Every single one of her books is always different – but they all revolve around books or bookish people. What I loved about ‘Beach Read’ was that it looked at the complexities of writing new stories and the terror of a blank white page staring at you from the start of the day and long into the night. But it also examines how sitting at your desk and simply typing away a brand-new dreamscape, isn’t as easy or as relaxing as some imagine the lifestyle of a writer to be. There’s research, interviews, understanding language types and tropes that build a character. How do you make them likeable? How much of yourself do you put into a book?
The storylines of the characters, their torments, and joys, nicely mirror what they’re trying to write. Gus, our stoic and unreadable male lead, is challenged to write a romantic comedy, the literary genre of choice by our heroine, January. January is a challenge to write highbrow literature – something that Gus greatly excels at. Gus doesn’t believe in ‘Happily-ever-after’ but January does – even if the story she told about her life isn’t the fairy-tale she wanted.
In an age where romance novels are the mainstream of BookTok – trying to come up with something original and well-written is a tough ask. We’re living in an age where new forms of marketing are really taking off and becoming ‘viral’ is the new way of selling books. Books like ‘Haunting Adeline’ became popular, not necessarily for their form of writing but for their plot or how spicy the book is (lets be honest – the more toxic the better). Originality is hard to gain in a world of spicy BookTok marketing, however, Emily Henry’s books are not only well written but has spice that isn’t worryingly toxic and realistic relationship dynamics that are possible to have in 2024. ‘Beach Read’ is a modern-day fairytale that could come true for modern-day people.