Beach Read

Beach Read
by Emily Henry
Recommended Ages: 15+

I was attracted to this steamy romance novel more by the idea of two novelists overcoming writer's block by swapping genres on a bet than by, you know (blush). Honest. It starts when January and Gus, two published writers who competed with each other in college (and, it gradually emerges, also had crushes on each other back then), find themselves spending the summer in neighboring cottages on the Michigan shore. Appropriately, or perhaps subversively, it grows from there into something a few literary notches above your standard, cheesy Hallmark movie novelization. But also, ahem, steamy. Adult content advisory is a go!

January likes to call her chosen genre "women's fiction" and specializes in happy endings that celebrate the possibility of true love, but her idea of the perfect marriage takes a beating when a strange woman shows up at her father's funeral and it's immediately apparent that her mother knew all about That Woman. Not only does this put her in a creative crisis when her publisher expects another love story by the end of the summer. It also upends her own dream romance with the perfect guy and leaves her with nowhere to live but the cheating pad she inherited from her cheating dad.

Gus, meanwhile, is the sort of literary author who resents being compared to Jonathan Franzen because in his heart, he wants to be compared to J.D. Salinger. He writes dark, pessimistic novels in which his characters hurt each other and ultimately destroy themselves. Secretly, he's trying to understand the trauma and tragedy of his own young life, of his abused mother who refused to leave her man, of the father who never tried to be what his family needed. His idea of a good novel ending is an ironic twist that brings the whole devastating ordeal full-circle.

Brought together again by sheer chance, the former rivals strike up a bet to swap genres and see which of them can complete and sell their novel first. Part of the deal also involves January joining Gus on his research for a heart-wrenching novel based on a suicide cult. But then, Gus must also join January on a series of romantic comddy cliché experiences, like a line dance and a Meg Ryan movie marathon. She's been well warned not to fall in love with him; I mean, honestly, she knew him in college and observed, at close range, the romantic devastation he left strewn behind him. Yet as they both start making progress on novels they hadn't expected to write, something begins to sizzle between them until the temptation reaches an intensity they won't be able to resist.

You know how it goes. Well, to tell the truth, I'm no expert, but I'm using my imagination here. I can count on one hand the number of books in this corner of the market that I've read cover to cover, and even those few have varied all the way from chaste, could-be-televised-without-editing-anything-out little romances to so-hot-you-need-oven-mitts-to-hold-them, smut-forward creations that leave nothing to the imagination except the idea of reading something with anything to it. And the whole spectrum in between. This book, as I hinted above, hits a point on the scatter graph where one's blood does heat up at times, but there are also characters you care about, undergoing emotionally complex and dramatically rich stories of their own, and exploring some dark, disturbing territory on their journey to find – well, whatever it is, it never seems like a foregone conclusion. They get maybe a "happy for now," but while "ever after" isn't promised, its possibility lies in them and them alone.

This is somewhere around the fifth of Emily Henry's nine novels to date. Her other titles include The Love that Split the World, A Million Junes, When the Sky Fell on Splendor, Hello Girls (co-authored with Brittany Cavallaro), People We Meet on Vacation, Book Lovers, Happy Place and Funny Story. And now that I mention them, I think I bought one of these books a while ago and never got past the first chapter. Maybe I should take another look. It's probably still lying around somewhere ...